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THE WINNING OF 
THE WEST 

AN ACCOUNT OF THE EXPLORATION AND 

SETTLEMENT OF OUR COUNTRY FROM 

THE ALLEGHANIES TO THE PACIFIC 

I 



BY 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

// 



9^ew l\nickerbocker Edition 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK — LONDON 






THE WINNING OP THE WEST 



Copyright, 1889, 1894, 1896, by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 

Copyright, 1917. by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 




cn 



-I" 



Made in the United States of America 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Roosevelt, Historian and Statesman 

George Haven Putnam v 

The Winning of the West, I 

I. The Spread of the EngHsh-Speaking Peoples . . 3 

II. The French of the Ohio Valley, 1 763-1 775 ... 23 

III. The Appalachian Confederacies, 1 765-1 775 . . 39 

IV. The Algonquins of the Northwest, 1 769-1 774 . . 56 

V. The Backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies, 1 769-1 774 . 83 

VI. Boone and the Long Hunters; and Their Hunting in 

No-Man's Land, 1 769-1 774 iii 

VII. Sevier, Robertson, and the Watauga Common- 
wealth, 1769-1774 137 

VIII. Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 160 

IX. The Battle of the Great Kanawha; and Logan's 

Speech, 1774 178 

X. Boone and the Settlement of Kentucky, 1775 . . 208 

XI. In the Current of the Revolution — The Southern 

Backwoodsmen Overwhelm the Cherokees, 1776 229 

XII. Growth and Civil Organization of Kentucky, 1776 . 256 

XIII. The War in the Northwest, 1 777-1 778 .... 272 

XIV. Clark's Conquest of the Illinois, 1778 .... 297 

iii 



iv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XV. Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes, 1779 . . 319 

XVI. Continuance of the Struggle in Kentucky and the 

Northwest, 1 779-1 781 345 

XVII. The Moravian Massacre, 1 779-1 782 .... 386 

XVIII. The Administration of the Conquered French 

Settlements, 1 779-1 783 406 

XIX. Kentucky Until the End of the Revolution, 1782- 

1783 420 

XX. The Holston Settlements, 1 777-1 779 .... 446 

XXI. King's Mountain, 1780 467 

XXII. The Holston Settlements to the End of the Revolu- 
tion, 1781-1783 . 510 

XXIII. Robertson Founds the Cumberland Settlement, 

1779-1780 535 

XXIV. The Ctunberland Settlements to the Close of the 

Revolution, 1 781-1783 558 



ROOSEVELT 
HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN 

By George Haven Putnam 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT was a man possessing a wide 
variety of interests. He was a careful student of nature, 
and, busy worker as he was in other directions, he came 
to be recognized as an authority in many divisions of animal 
life; he was a keen sportsman and he succeeded, notwithstanding 
the limitation of restricted eyesight, in making himself an ex- 
cellent shot; he had interested himself through many years of 
his life in historical research, with preference for the divisions 
or phases of history which had to do with active operations, 
campaigns of one kind or another — quidquid agunt homines — 
but the agenda that attracted him had to do not with closet 
diplomacy, but with real action; and, finally, he was, as we all 
know, a man absorbed in public affairs, one who delighted in 
leadership and in influence, and for whom politics represented 
not only a patriotic purpose but a pleasurable game. 

This did not mean, of course, that for him politics was only a 
game. Roosevelt was a patriot, and while his judgment was 
sometimes confused by personal ambition or by a somewhat in- 
tense subjectivity, he took no action and advocated no policy 
that was not, as he had honestly convinced himself at the time, 
for the advantage of his country and of the world. But all of his 
political activities brought to him keen pleasure and enabled him 
to have (using the boyish vernacular that he never outgrew) a 
bully time ! I remember one such reference that he made during 
his first presidential term to the advantages of speaking from the 



vi ROOSEVELT 

White House. I had accused him (as had been done by others) 
of a tendency to preaching. "Yes, Haven," he rejoined, "most 
of us enjoy preaching, and I've got such a bully pulpit!" 

If Roosevelt had not been fascinated by political life, he could 
have achieved fame as a scholar. For historical work he cer- 
tainly possessed special qualities. His writing gave evidence of 
industry, energy, conscientious research, a good understanding of 
proportion in the selection and presentation of his material, and 
a dramatic and artistic sense that made his narratives vivid pic- 
tures which impressed themselves on the memory of the reader. 

In 1888, when he began the writing of "The Winning of the 
West," Roosevelt was expecting to devote some years to his- 
torical work. He was ambitious, as he told me, to do for the 
record of the southwest territories of our continent what Park- 
man had done for the explorations and settlements of the north- 
west. 

The subject presented much that was fascinating for a historian 
who had such a sympathetic admiration for deeds of energy and 
heroism such as had filled the lives of the explorers and frontiers- 
men who won the control of the great territories from the Ohio 
to the Mississippi, and from the Mississippi to the Pacific and 
the Gulf. 

Roosevelt never wrote of anything in which he was not sympa- 
thetically interested. We think of him as strenuous and eager, 
but he was also painstaking and conscientious. 

According to the original plan, worked over with his publisher, 
Roosevelt's narrative was to cover, in addition to a record of the 
region from which were developed the States of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, an account of the explorations 
and development of all territory of the Southwest that came 
under the domination of the United States. I think that his first 
incentive toward this undertaking, which involved, of course, a 
very large amount of research and labor, was his appreciation of 
Parkman's volume "The Oregon Trail," published by G. P. 
Putnam, in 1850. A history completed on such a plan would 
have covered the account of the annexation of Texas, the war 



HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN vii 

with Mexico, which resulted in the absorption into the United 
States of New Mexico, Arizona, and CaHfornia, and the expedi- 
tions or campaigns of the gold-seekers who, making their way 
with the "prairie-schooners," traversed the continent between 
the years 1847 and 1850. This part of the historical scheme was, 
however, blocked by events which were beyond the control of 
the historian. The sixth volume of "The Winning of the West" 
was completed in 1896. 

In 1898 came the Spanish War and the appointment of Roose- 
velt as assistant secretary (and active executive) of the Navy 
Department. The story of the Rough Riders is familiar. The 
prestige which he won in the Cuban campaign brought to him the 
governorship of New York and later the position of vice-president. 
This last ofifice was forced upon Roosevelt, much against his will, 
by Senator Thomas C. Piatt, then chief boss of the Republican 
party. Piatt had found the young governor * ' difficult, ' ' and often 
impossible to control, and was planning to have him pushed out- 
side of the lines of political leadership. Theodore said to me 
sadly, speaking in May, 1901 : "Haven, my political career is, I 
fear, ended. Whoever heard of anything being done by that 
nonentity of an official, a vice-president?" Four months later 
came the assassination of McKinley, and Roosevelt was President 
of the United States. 

I recall a luncheon given at the White House some time in the 
winter of 1902. The President called down to me from his end 
of the long table, over the heads of sixteen or twenty guests: 
"Haven, I do not see how I am going to be able to complete, 
according to agreement, those volumes for which you are waiting. 
You see I am very busy just now." It proved necessary for the 
publisher to give up the expectation of securing from Roosevelt 
the volumes on Texas, California, and the Mexican War. These 
subjects were later excellently well taken care of by writers like 
Dellenbaugh, McElroy, and Justin H. Smith. 

Roosevelt's responsibilities as President did not, however, 
cause him to lose his interest in the subject to which he had al- 
ready given much work. He was a persistent and constant reader, 



viii ROOSEVELT 

but he never wasted time in trivial reading. As far as I could 
learn, he never rested the thinking cells of his brain in frivolity. 
His only rest was in athletic exercise, and that he took rather 
fiercely. He kept up his reading in history and in natural science, 
and he seemed never to forget what he had once read. In this 
matter he can be compared with Lincoln. He absorbed the text 
of a book that he had once mastered. 

I remember another occasion at the White House, I think it 
was in 1904, also a small luncheon. The guest of the day was an 
old Confederate general from Tennessee, who was introduced to 
the President by Senator Bate, of the same State. Roosevelt, 
who was always a considerate host, turned the conversation to 
the history and the personalities of his guest's home State. He 
knew the region well, because at the time he was shaping "The 
Winning of the West" volumes he had been over the territory 
in person, gathering material and interviewing the men who had 
documents, correspondence, or traditions. He made reference 
to the State of Franklin, which, as our history tells us, carried on 
a transitory existence for a little less than two years before its 
application for statehood was finally rejected by Congress. 

It happened that the old general had come from the Holton 
Valley, which had been the most important division of the little 
State. The general spoke up with grateful appreciation : ' ' Why, 
Mr. President, I never met anybody before, or certainly anybody 
in the East, who ever heard that there had been such a State as 
Franklin." 

Roosevelt went on to refer to men of Tennessee whose careers 
or whose characters had interested him. He spoke of President 
Polk, expressing the opinion that Polk's service to the country 
had not been fairly appreciated by the North. He laid special 
emphasis upon the career and the personality of Andrew Jackson. 
"There," he said, "was a man who appreciated the responsi- 
bilities, the power, and the opportunities that belong to the office 
of the Chief Executive. When Jackson saw that a thing needed 
to be done, and when he knew he was right in regard to his plan 
for the doing (and Jackson usually was sure that he was right), 



HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN ix 

Jackson did not permit any red tape or organization routine to 
stand in the way. He went on and did the thing which in his 
judgment was to prove of service for the country." 

A little smile went around the table, as we remembered the 
recent action of the present Executive in taking possession of the 
Panama Canal Zone. 

"Jackson," continued the President, "had his faults, as the 
rest of us have. He was inclined to the belief that any one who 
failed to agree, and to agree promptly, with Andrew Jackson was 
either a fool or a villain." At that point Theodore caught my 
face across the table. I thought I had kept a pretty straight ex- 
pression, but Roosevelt broke out with: "Now, Haven, stop your 
chuckling. I know what you are thinking about." Then all the 
guests at the table broke out into a guffaw. We had all been 
thinking of the same thing. Roosevelt joined heartily in the 
laughter. He was one of the men who could afford to laugh at 
himself, and that in itself is a sign of largeness of nature. 

II 

The narratives in "The Winning of the West" are, as I have 
said, told in dramatic language, but the author did not permit 
his sense of dramatic effect to interfere with, or even to influence, 
the accuracy of the record. As his introduction to the volumes 
has made clear, his examination of the documents in the case had 
been comprehensive, thorough, and even exhaustive. He had 
travelled, sometimes on horseback, over all the States the early 
history of which he was recording. He had had the opportunity 
of examining archives — American, French, English, and Spanish. 
He had read countless documents and letters. His admiration of 
the heroism of the frontiersmen did not prevent him from realiz- 
ing and from describing honestly their limitations, their intoler- 
ance with the Indians, and their frequent difficulty in understand- 
ing the point of view of the other fellow. Roosevelt's description 
of such episodes as the capture of Vincennes by Clark and of the 
Battle of King's Mountain are really brilliantly told episodes. 



X ROOSEVELT 

There is no "fine writing. " The language is simple enough. But 
the writer has succeeded in visualizing the men, their environ- 
ment, their task, and the things accomplished. I think he was 
the first historian to indicate that the Battle of King's Mountain, 
fought in September, 1780, at which the rear-guard of the army 
of Comwallis was defeated, in cutting Comwallis off from his 
base of supplies, may easily have been the decisive factor in the 
success of the campaign which ended in the surrender at York- 
town. He makes clear that the appearance from the western side 
of the Alleghanies of the three groups of fighters, called for the 
purpose of the battle "battalions," under the leadership of Colo- 
nels Campbell, Sevier, and Shelby, brought as much surprise to 
the Continental generals, to Washington and Greene, as it did to 
Comwallis and to Colonel Ferguson who commanded the British 
troops that, after Ferguson's death, surrendered on the top of 
King's Mountain, I do not know of another case in history in 
which a battle has been won by three detachments each under a 
separate command, and with no one of the commanders acknowl- 
edging the leadership of the other. This was one of the Revolu- 
tionary episodes in which Roosevelt took a personal delight, and 
the delight is indicated in the glow of his narrative. 

The West, the winning of which Roosevelt describes, comprised 
what are now described as the "Middle States" of the Republic. 
The occupation of this territory by the sturdy frontiersmen, who 
faced the hardships of the toilsome journeys, of fierce weather, of 
aggressive Indians, and many of whom under these hardships 
sacrificed their lives, constituted a great step forward toward the 
development of our national territory, a development that was 
completed when we secured the control of the Pacific coast and 
Alaska. The winning of the West was really the development of 
the nation. This great fact was fully recognized by our historian, 
and his description of it constitutes one of the most valuable, and 
certainly one of the most dramatic, divisions of the history of the 
Republic. 



HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN xi 

III 

"The Winning of the West" was one of the few books which 
were in large part written, put into print, bound, and sold under 
the one roof. 

Mr. Roosevelt found it convenient to utilize for his work the 
desk that was placed at his disposal in the premises of the pub- 
lishing house, which was at that time located in 23d Street. 

The three upper floors of the building were then occupied by 
the printing and binding departments of The Knickerbocker 
Press. The ground floor was devoted to the business of Putnam's 
retail store. From week to week Roosevelt completed some di- 
visions of his text, which then went up-stairs to the composing- 
room and came back for the author's proof-reading. The printing 
and the binding were completed up-stairs, and supplies of the 
book were shipped from the publishing department to the book- 
sellers throughout the country. Supplies were, of course, also 
delivered for direct sale to the customers of the retail department. 
Before the work was completed, Roosevelt accepted appointment 
as civil service commissioner, and some of the chapters in the 
later volumes were written in Washington, while he was actively 
— I might say combatively — engaged in the extension of the 
merit system. The final volume was completed in the old head- 
quarters of the New York Police Department in Mulberry Street 
while he was carrying on his memorable fight for civic decency 
as president of the Police Board. 

Roosevelt's relation with the publishing house of G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons was not only that of an author and client, but of a 
partner. He had at the time of the writing of his first book, 
"The Naval War of 18 12," entered the firm as a silent or special 
partner. Those who knew the man will realize the difficulty, I 
might say the impracticability, of Roosevelt being "silent" 
imder any responsibilities. He put his desk in my office and in- 
terested himself in showing his publisher how to run a publishing 
business. He was, as Mrs. Partington is quoted as saying, 
"profligate in suggestions." He accepted, however, with full 



xii ROOSEVELT 

good nature the turning down of nearly all of his plans for im- 
possible publishing undertakings. He retired from the firm, after 
a few years' association, with no little regret. He needed the 
amount of his investment in order to protect his ownership in 
his cattle-ranches in Montana. There had been a couple of bad 
seasons, and the ranches were in financial need. He scolded me 
later for not having refused to pay him off. "The publishing 
undertaking," he said, "was a good investment, but the money 
that you returned to me went into the prairie and has never 
come back." 

IV 

It is difficult even after the passage of almost five years to write 
unmoved of my personal relations with my friend. I knew him 
from the time he was a bright-eyed and active-minded boy of ten. 
It was my privilege to have admission to the charming home cir- 
cle, presided over by his public-spirited and fine-minded father 
and his very attractive mother. Theodore came to me almost 
directly from college to secure some business experience in a pub- 
lishing office. His home was near my place of business in 23d 
Street, and he placed his desk next to mine, and carried on from 
there his correspondence, which was already beginning to be 
active. 

It was as a publisher that he made his first entrance into poli- 
tics, when he was elected to the Assembly, in Albany. I re- 
member his vigorous expressions, when he would come to me on 
Saturday morning, about the men with whom he had had to do 
in Albany, and the nefarious schemes he was opposing. He had, 
what was very exceptional — in fact almost unprecedented in our 
Legislative Assembly — made himself heard and felt during his 
first term. With no party behind him, but with a small group of 
men who believed in him, including his friend and mine, Walter 
Howe, he was able, inexperienced youngster as he was, to put 
through certain measures which were valuable for the city, and 
to head off not a few schemes which would have worked mischief. 



HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN xiii 

He gave immediate evidence of qualities as a leader, and of his 
ability to impress his personality upon the men with whom he had 
to do. These men came to realize, at once, that Roosevelt had no 
party or personal purposes and was working purely for the good 
of the community. They realized also his unflinching courage, 
and that when he stated he was going to fight something which 
in his judgment was abominable, the fight would go on to the end. 

He made me his confidant at the time in regard to details of 
this political work, and his own plans and purpose. He was amus- 
ingly frank to me in analyzing the qualities, good and bad, of the 
politicians whom he was then meeting for the first time. His 
association with myself continued later, when he interested him- 
self in the cause of civil service reform, a cause for which he did 
such excellent work. He became, shortly after leaving the As- 
sembly, a member of the executive committee of our New York 
association, and it was in that committee that he came into 
personal relations, which soon became relations of intimate friend- 
ship, with men like Curtis, Schurz, Barlow, Godkin, Horace 
White, and other patriotic citizens who were doing what they 
could to secure a higher standard of service for the officials of 
the country. It was his experience in this committee that made 
his later work as a civil service commissioner peculiarly valuable, 
and he established for that commission in Washington a standard 
of courageous and consistent action which later could not be put 
to one side. 

I consider that the service rendered by him in behalf of the 
civil service cause was similar to that rendered by John Marshall 
in securing assured continuity for the Constitution. In the out- 
spoken expression of his convictions, in his opposition to men 
whom he found to be, or believed to be, untrustworthy, in his 
straightforward directness of statement and of action, he made, 
of necessity, sharp opponents, but he also increased, from year 
to year, the circle of his warm personal friends. I found myself, 
through those years, holding the man in increasing respect, and 
the friend with a larger and larger measure of affectionate 
regard. 



xiv ROOSEVELT 

V 

The last public document to which Roosevelt gave his name 
was written from his sick-bed in the hospital. I had been to see 
him from time to time, but on this occasion he had sent for me, 
and I had the pleasure of making the visit in company with 
Doctor Manning. Roosevelt said there was something he wanted 
me to do for him, "While I was in the White House, I made a 
statement which I now want to correct. I have changed my mind 
in regard to a matter of some importance." 

He was referring to an utterance made while he was President 
in regard to the relations of the United States with England. 
He had taken the ground that we should, of course, always main- 
tain a friendly association with Great Britain, and that such 
association was important on more grounds than one. He said 
further, however, that even in our relations with England there 
were some things in regard to which we should make reservation. 
Issues might arise in which the national honor would be involved. 

"I was not ready," he continued, "at that time to agree that 
we should be ready to submit every possible issue to arbitration. 
I want, however, to say to-day that no issue can arise between the 
United States and Great Britain which ought not to be settled, 
and which cannot be settled, in friendly conference, or if the con- 
ference may not be successful, be settled by arbitration. Between 
England and ourselves there must be no non-justiciable question. 
This is essential for the interests of the English-speaking peoples 
of the world, and I believe it is important, if not essential, for 
the safety and peace of the world itself. I want to tell the public 
that I have changed my mind on this matter." 

"There need be no diflficulty," I said. "When I get back to 
the office, I will put certain questions to you in a letter, and I 
will see to it that your answer to my letter reaches the public on 
both sides of the Atlantic." 

My letter went to Roosevelt the next day, and his answer came 
to me a day later. It was published widely through the United 
States and Great Britain. The letter would in any case have se- 



HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN 



XV 



cured in England sympathetic attention, but as it reached the 
papers by mail just at the time the news of Roosevelt's death came 
by cable, it carried special emphasis. It was his last word to the 
English as well as to the American people. I make a brief cita- 
tion from this letter: 

' ' This war has brought home to the great majority of the think- 
ing men of this country the fact that the English-speaking peoples 
possess, in common, both ideals and interests. We can best do 
our duty as members of the Family of Nations, to maintain 
peace and justice throughout the world, by first rendering it im- 
possible that the peace between ourselves can ever be broken. 
. . . There is no reason why there should not be on the two sides 
of the Atlantic the same relation for peace that has for a century 
obtained on the two sides of the Great Lakes. . . . We should 
say that under no circumstances shall there ever be a resort to 
war between the United States and the British Empire, and that 
no question can ever arise between them that cannot be settled 
in judicial fashion, in some such manner as questions between 
States of our own Union would be settled." 

I am glad to remember that almost the last spoken word by 
him to America and the world should have been given through 
me. 

Theodore Roosevelt was a man devoted to the service of the 
Republic and of humanity. He believed that life was worth 
while; that the years and days were given to a man in trust, and 
that it was a crime to waste even an hour. He got much out of 
life because he put much into life. 



THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



"O strange New World that yit wast never young, 
Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung, 
Brown foundhn' o' the woods, whose baby-bed 
Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread, 
And who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, 
Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains, 
Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain 
With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane ; 
Thou skilled by Freedom and by gret events 
To pitch new states ez Old World men pitch tents. 
Thou taught by fate to know Jehovah's plan, 
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man. 

"Oh, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he 
'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea; 
Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, 
By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs." 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



CHAPTER I 

THE SPREAD OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 

DURING the past three centuries the spread of the Eng- 
Hsh-speaking peoples over the world's waste spaces 
has been not only the most striking feature in the 
world's history, but also the event of all others most far- 
reaching in its effects and its importance. 

The tongue which Bacon feared to use in his writings, lest 
they should remain forever unknown to all but the inhabi- 
tants of a relatively unimportant insular kingdom, is now the 
speech of two continents. The Common Law which Coke 
jealously upheld in the southern half of a single European 
island, is now the law of the land throughout the vast regions 
of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The 
names of the plays that Shakespeare wrote are household 
words in the mouths of mighty nations whose wide domains 
were to him more unreal than the realm of Prester John. 
Over half the descendants of their fellow countrymen of that 
day now dwell in lands which, when these three Englishmen 
were born, held not a single white inhabitant ; the race which, 
when they were in their prime, was hemmed in between the 
North and the Irish seas, to-day holds sway over worlds 
whose endless coasts are washed by the waves of the three 
great oceans. 

There have been many other races that at one time or 
another had their great periods of race expansion — as dis- 
tinguished from mere conquest — but there has never been an- 
other whose expansion has been either so broad or so rapid. 

At one time, many centuries ago, it seemed as if the Ger- 
manic peoples, like their Celtic foes and neighbors, would be 

3 



4 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

absorbed into the all-conquering Roman power, and merging 
their identity in that of the victors, would accept their law, 
their speech, and their habits of thought. But this danger 
vanished forever on the day of the slaughter by the Teuto- 
burger Wald, when the legions of Varus were broken by 
the rush of Hermann's wild warriors. 

Two or three hundred years later the Germans, no longer 
on the defensive, themselves went forth from their marshy 
forests, conquering and to conquer. For century after cen- 
tury they swarmed out of the dark woodland east of the Rhine 
and north of the Danube; and as their force spent itself, the 
movement was taken up by their brethren who dwelt along 
the coasts of the Baltic and the North Atlantic. From the 
Volga to the Pillars of Hercules, from Sicily to Britain, 
every land in turn bowed to the warlike prowess of the stal- 
wart sons of Odin. Rome and Novgorod, the imperial city 
of Italy as well as the squalid capital of Muscovy, acknowl- 
edged the sway of kings of Teutonic or Scandinavian blood. 

In most cases, however, the victorious invaders merely in- 
truded themselves among the original and far more numerous 
owners of the land, ruled over them, and were absorbed by 
them. This happened to both Teuton and Scandinavian — to 
the descendants of Alaric as well as to the children of Rurik. 
The Dane in Ireland became a Celt; the Goth of the Iberian 
peninsula became a Spaniard; Frank and Norwegian alike 
were merged into the mass of Romance-speaking Gauls, who 
themselves finally grew to be called by the names of their 
masters. Thus it came about that though the German tribes 
conquered Europe they did not extend the limits of Germany 
nor the sway of the German race. On the contrary, they 
strengthened the hands of the rivals of the people from whom 
they sprang. They gave rulers — kaisers, kings, barons, and 
knights — to all the lands they overran ; here and there they 
imposed their own names on kingdoms and principalities — 
as in France, Normandy, Burgundy, and Lombardy; they 
grafted the feudal system on the Roman jurisprudence, and 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 5 

interpolated a few Teutonic words in the Latin dialects of 
the peoples they had conquered; but, hopelessly outnumbered, 
they were soon lost in the mass of their subjects, and adopted 
from them their laws, their culture, and their language. As 
a result, the mixed races of the south — the Latin nations as 
they are sometimes called — strengthened by the infusion of 
northern blood, sprang anew into vigorous life, and became 
for the time being the leaders of the European world. 

There was but one land whereof the winning made a last- 
ing addition to Germanic soil; but this land was destined to 
be of more importance in the future of the Germanic peoples 
than all their continental possessions, original and acquired, 
put together. The day when the keels of the Low Dutch sea- 
thieves first grated on the British coast was big with the doom 
of many nations. There sprang up in conquered southern 
Britain, when its name had been significantly changed to Eng- 
land, that branch of the Germanic stock which was in the end 
to grasp almost literally world-wide power, and by its over- 
shadowing growth to dwarf into comparative insignificance 
all its kindred folk. At the time, in the general wreck of the 
civilized world, the making of England attracted but little 
attention. Men's eyes were riveted on the empires conquered 
by the hosts of Alaric, Theodoric, and Clovis, not on the 
swarm of little kingdoms and earldoms founded by the name- 
less chiefs who led each his band of hard-rowing, hard-fight- 
ing henchmen across the stormy waters of the German Ocean. 
Yet the rule and the race of Goth, Frank, and Burgund have 
vanished from off the earth, while the sons of the unknown 
Saxon, Anglian, and Friesic warriors now hold in their hands 
the fate of the coming years. 

After the great Teutonic wanderings were over, there came 
a long lull, until, with the discovery of America, a new period 
of even vaster race expansion began. During this lull the 
nations of Europe took on their present shapes. Indeed, the 
so-called Latin nations — the French and Spaniards, for in- 
stance — may be said to have been born after the first set of 



6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

migrations ceased. Their national history, as such, does not 
really begin until about that time, whereas that of the Ger- 
manic peoples stretches back unbroken to the days when we 
first hear of their existence. It would be hard to say which 
one of half a dozen races that existed in Europe during the 
early centuries of the present era should be considered as 
especially the ancestor of the modern Frenchman or Spaniard. 
When the Romans conquered Gaul and Iberia they did not 
in any place drive out the ancient owners of the soil ; they 
simply Romanized them, and left them as the base of the 
population. By the Frankish and Visigothic invasions another 
strain of blood was added, to be speedily absorbed, while the 
invaders took the language of the conquered people, and es- 
tablished themselves as the ruling class. Thus the modern 
nations who sprang from this mixture derive portions of their 
governmental system and general policy from one race, most 
of their blood from another, and their language, law, and cul- 
ture from a third. 

The English race, on the contrary, has a perfectly con- 
tinuous history. When Alfred reigned, the English already 
had a distinct national being; when Charlemagne reigned, the 
French, as we use the term to-day, had no national being 
whatever. The Germans of the mainland merely overran the 
countries that lay in their path; but the sea-rovers who won 
England to a great extent actually displaced the native Britons. 
The former were absorbed by the subject-races ; the latter, 
on the contrary, slew or drove off or assimilated the original 
inhabitants. Unlike all the other Germanic swarms, the Eng- 
lish took neither creed nor custom, neither law nor speech, from 
their beaten foes. At the time when the dynasty of the Capets 
had become firmly established at Paris, France was merely part 
of a country where Latinized Gauls and Basques were ruled by 
Latinized Franks, Goths, Burgunds, and Normans; but the 
people across the Channel then showed little trace of Celtic or 
Romance influence. It would be hard to say whether Vercinge- 
torix or Caesar, Clovis or Syagrius, has the better right to 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 7 

stand as the prototype of a modern French general. There 
is no such doubt in the other case. The average EngHshman, 
American, or Austrahan of to-day who wishes to recall the 
feats of power with which his race should be credited in the 
shadowy dawn of its history, may go back to the half -mythical 
glories of Hengist and Horsa, perhaps to the deeds of Civilis 
the Batavian, or to those of the hero of the Teutoburger fight, 
but certainly to the wars neither of the Silurian chief Car- 
actacus nor of his conqueror, the after-time Emperor Ves- 
pasian. 

Nevertheless, when, in the sixteenth century, the European 
peoples began to extend their dominions beyond Europe, Eng- 
land had grown to differ profoundly from the Germanic coun- 
tries of the mainland. A very large Celtic' element had been 
introduced into the English blood, and, in addition, there had 
been a considerable Scandinavian admixture. More important 
still were the radical changes brought by the Norman con- 
quest ; chief among them the transformation of the old Eng- 
lish tongue into the magnificent language which is now the 
common inheritance of so many wide-spread peoples. Eng- 
land's insular position, moreover, permitted it to work out 
its own fate comparatively unhampered by the presence of 
outside powers ; so that it developed a type of nationality 
totally distinct from the types of the European mainland. 

All this is not foreign to American history. The vast move- 
ment by which this continent was conquered and peopled can- 
not be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It 
was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of 
mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with 
them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, how- 
ever roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took 
part therein. , 

When, with the voyages of Columbus and his successors, 
the great period of extra-European colonization began, various 
nations strove to share in the work. Most of them had to 



8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

plant their colonies in lands across the sea; Russia, alone, was 
by her geographical position enabled to extend her frontiers 
by land, and, in consequence, her comparatively recent colo- 
nization of Siberia bears some resemblance to our own work 
in the Western United States. The other countries of Europe 
were forced to find their outlets for conquest and emigration 
beyond the ocean, and, until the colonists had taken firm root 
in their new homes, the mastery of the seas thus became a mat- 
ter of vital consequence. 

Among the lands beyond the ocean America was the first 
reached and the most important. It was conquered by differ- 
ent European races, and shoals of European settlers were 
thrust forth upon its shores. These sometimes displaced and 
sometimes merely overcame and lived among the natives. They 
also, to their own lasting harm, committed a crime whose 
short-sighted folly was worse than its guilt, for they brought 
hordes of African slaves, whose descendants now form im- 
mense populations in certain portions of the land. Through- 
out the continent we therefore find the white, red, and black 
races in every stage of purity and intermixture. One result 
of this great turmoil of conquest and immigration has been 
that, in certain parts of America, the lines of cleavage of race 
are so far from coinciding with the lines of cleavage of speech 
that they run at right angles to them — as in the four commu- 
nities of Ontario, Quebec, Hayti, and Jamaica. 

Each intruding European power, in winning for itself new 
realms beyond the seas, had to wage a twofold war, over- 
coming the original inhabitants with one hand, and with the 
other warding off the assaults of the kindred nations that 
were bent on the same schemes. Generally, the contests of 
the latter kind were much the most important. The victories 
by which the struggles between the European conquerors them- 
selves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, some- 
times, even the most important of them, sweeping though they 
were, were in parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would 
be impossible to overestimate the far-reaching effects of the 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 9 

overthrow of the French power in America; but Lower Can- 
ada, where the fatal blow was given, itself suffered nothing but 
a political conquest, which did not interfere in the least with 
the growth of a French state along both sides of the lower St. 
Lawrence. In a somewhat similar way Dutch communities 
have held their own, and indeed have sprung up, in South 
Africa. 

All the European nations touching on the Atlantic seaboard 
took part in the new work, with very varying success — Ger- 
many alone, then rent by many feuds, having no share therein. 
Portugal founded a single state, Brazil, The Scandinavian 
nations did little; their chief colony fell under the control of 
the Dutch. The English and the Spaniards were the two na- 
tions to whom the bulk of the new lands fell, the former get- 
ting much the greater portion. The conquests of the Span- 
iards took place in the sixteenth century. The West Indies 
and Mexico, Peru and the limitless grass plains of what is 
now the Argentine Confederation — all these and the lands 
lying between them had been conquered and colonized by the 
Spaniards before there was a single English settlement in 
the New World, and while the fleets of the Catholic king still 
held for him the lordship of the ocean. Then the cumbrous 
Spanish vessels succumbed to the attacks of the swift war- 
ships of Holland and England, and the sun of the Spanish 
world-dominion set as quickly as it had risen. Spain at once 
came to a standstill ; it was only here and there that she even 
extended her rule over a few neighboring Indian tribes, while 
she was utterly unable to take the offensive against the French, 
Dutch, and English. But it is a singular thing that these vig- 
orous and powerful newcomers, who had so quickly put a stop 
to her further growth, yet wrested from her very little of 
what was already hers. They plundered a great many Spanish 
cities and captured a great many Spanish galleons, but they 
made no great or lar.ting conquest of Spanish territory. Their 
mutual jealousies, and the fear each felt of the others, were 
among the main causes of this state of things ; and hence it 



10 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

came about that after the opening of the seventeenth century 
the wars they waged against one another were of far more 
ultimate . consequence than the wars they waged against the 
former mistress of the western world. England in the end 
drove both France and Holland from the field ; but it was under 
the banner of the American Republic, not under that of the 
British monarchy, that the English-speaking peoples first won 
vast stretches of land from the descendants of the Spanish 
conquerors. 

The three most powerful of Spain's rivals waged many a 
long war with one another to decide which should grasp 
the sceptre that had slipped from Spanish hands. The fleets 
of Holland fought with stubborn obstinacy to wrest from Eng- 
land her naval supremacy; but they failed, and in the end 
the greater portion of the Dutch domains fell to their foes. 
The French likewise began a course of conquest and coloni- 
zation at the same time the English did, and after a couple 
of centuries of rivalry, ending in prolonged warfare, they also 
succumbed. The close of the most important colonial contest 
ever waged left the French without a foot of soil on the 
North American mainland; while their victorious foes had 
not only obtained the lead in the race for supremacy on that 
continent, but had also won the command of the ocean. They 
thenceforth found themselves free to work their will in all 
sea-girt lands, unchecked by hostile European influence. 

Most fortunately, when England began her career as a col- 
onizing power in America, Spain had already taken possession 
of the populous tropical and subtropical regions, and the north- 
ern power was thus forced to form her settlements in the 
sparsely peopled temperate zone. 

It is of vital importance to remember that the English and 
Spanish conquests in America differed from each other very 
much as did the original conquests which gave rise to the 
English and the Spanish nations. The English had extermi- 
nated or assimilated the Celts of Britain, and they substan- 
tially repeated the process with the Indians of America; al- 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES ii 

though of course in America there was very little, instead of 
very much, assimilation. The Germanic strain is dominant 
in the blood of the average Englishman, exactly as the Eng- 
lish strain is dominant in the blood of the average American. 
Twice a portion of the race has shifted its home, in each case 
undergoing a marked change, due both to outside influence and 
to internal development; but in the main retaining, especially 
in the last instance, the general race characteristics. 

It was quite otherwise in the countries conquered by Cortes, 
Pizarro, and their successors. Instead of killing or driving off 
the natives as the English did, the Spaniards simply sat down 
in the midst of a much more numerous aboriginal popula- 
tion. The process by which Central and South America 
became Spanish bore very close resemblance to the process by 
which the lands of southeastern Europe were turned into Ro- 
mance-speaking countries. The bulk of the original inhabitants 
remained unchanged in each case. There was little displace- 
ment of population. Roman soldiers and magistrates, Roman 
merchants and handicraftsmen were thrust in among the Celtic 
and Iberian peoples, exactly as the Spanish military and civil 
rulers, priests, traders, land-owners, and mine-owners settled 
down among the Indians of Peru and Mexico. By degrees, in 
each case, the many learnt the language and adopted the laws, 
religion, and governmental system of the few, although keep- 
ing certain of their own customs and habits of thought. 
Though the ordinary Spaniard of to-day speaks a Romance 
dialect, he is mainly of Celto-Iberian blood; and though most 
Mexicans and Peruvians speak Spanish, yet the great ma- 
jority of them trace their descent back to the subjects of Mon- 
tezuma and the Incas. Moreover, exactly as in Europe little 
ethnic islands of Breton and Basque stock have remained un- 
affected by the Romance flood, so in America there are large 
communities where the inhabitants keep unchanged the speech 
and the customs of their Indian forefathers. 

The English-speaking peoples now hold more and better land 
than any other American nationality or set of nationalities. 



12 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

They have in their veins less aboriginal American blood than 
any of their neighbors. Yet it is noteworthy that the latter 
have tacitly allowed them to arrogate to themselves the title 
of "Americans," whereby to designate their distinctive and 
individual nationality. 

So much for the difference between the way in which the 
English and the way in which other European nations have 
conquered and colonized. But there have been likewise very 
great differences in the methods and courses of the English- 
speaking peoples themselves, at different times and in different 
places. 

The settlement of the United States and Canada, through- 
out most of their extent, bears much resemblance to the later 
settlement of Australia and New Zealand. The English con- 
quest of India and even the English conquest of South Africa 
come in an entirely different category. The first was a mere 
political conquest, like the Dutch conquest of Java or the ex- 
tension of the Roman Empire over parts of Asia. South 
Africa in some respects stands by itself, because there the 
English are confronted by another white race which it is as 
yet uncertain whether they can assimilate, and, what is infi- 
nitely more important, because they are there confronted by 
a very large native population with which they cannot mingle, 
and which neither dies out nor recedes before their advance. 
It is not likely, but it is at least within the bounds of possi- 
bility, that in the course of centuries the whites of South 
Africa will suffer a fate akin to that which befell the Greek 
colonists in the Tauric Chersonese, and be swallowed up in the 
overwhelming mass of black barbarism. 

On the other hand, it may fairly be said that in America 
and Australia the English race has already entered into and 
begun the enjoyment of its great inheritance. When these 
continents were settled they contained the largest tracts of 
fertile, temperate, thinly peopled country on the face of the 
globe. We cannot rate too highly the importance of their ac- 
quisition. Their successful settlement was a feat which by 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 13 

comparison utterly dv/arfs all the European wars of the last 
two centuries ; just as the importance of the issues at stake 
in the wars of Rome and Carthage completely overshadowed 
the interests for which the various contemporary Greek king- 
doms were at the same time striving. 

Australia, which was much less important than America, 
was also won and settled with far less difficulty. The natives 
were so few in number and of such a low type, that they prac- 
tically offered no resistance at all, being but little more hin- 
drance than an equal number of ferocious beasts. There was 
no rivalry whatever by any European power, because the actual 
settlement — not the mere expatriation of convicts — only began 
when England, as a result of her struggle with Republican 
and Imperial France, had won the absolute control of the seas. 
Unknown to themselves. Nelson and his fellow admirals set- 
tled the fate of Australia, upon which they probably never 
wasted a thought. Trafalgar decided much more than the 
mere question whether Great Britain should temporarily share 
the fate that so soon befell Prussia; for in all probability it 
decided the destiny of the island-continent that lay in the South 
Seas. 

The history of the English-speaking race in America has 
been widely different. In Australia there was no fighting 
whatever, whether with natives or with other foreigners. In 
America for the past two centuries and a half there has been 
a constant succession of contests with powerful and warlike 
native tribes, with rival European nations, and with American 
nations of European origin. But even in America there have 
been wide differences in the way the work has had to be done 
in different parts of the country, since the close of the great 
colonial contests between England, France, and Spain. 

The extension of the English, westward through Canada, 
since the War of the Revolution has been in its essential fea- 
tures merely a less important repetition of what has gone on 
in the northern United States. The gold-miner, the trans- 
continental railway, and the soldier have been the pioneers of 



14 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

civilization. The chief point of difference, which was but 
small, arose from the fact that the whole of western Canada 
was "for a long time under the control of the most powerful 
of all the fur companies, in whose employ were very many 
French voyageurs and coiirciirs de hois. From these there 
sprang up in the valleys of the Red River and the Saskatche- 
wan a singular race of half-breeds, with a unique semiciviliza- 
tion of their own. It was with these half-breeds, and not, as 
in the United States, with the Indians, that the settlers of north- 
western Canada had their main difficulties. 

In what now forms the United States, taking the country as 
a whole, the foes who had to be met and overcome were 
very much more formidable. The ground had to be not only 
settled but conquered, sometimes at the expense of the natives, 
often at the expense of rival European races. As already 
pointed out, the Indians themselves formed one of the main 
factors in deciding the fate of the continent. They were never 
able in the end to avert the white conquest, but they could 
often delay its advance for a long spell of years. The Iroquois, 
for instance, held their own against all comers for two cen- 
turies. Many other tribes stayed for a time the oncoming 
white flood, or even drove it back ; in Maine, the settlers were 
for a hundred years confined to a narrow strip of seacoast. 
Against the Spaniards, there were even here and there Indian 
nations who definitely recovered the ground they had lost. 

When the whites first landed, the superiority and, above 
all, the novelty of their arms gave them a very great advan- 
tage. But the Indians soon became accustomed to the new- 
comers' weapons and style of warfare. By the time the Eng- 
lish had consolidated the Atlantic colonies under their rule, 
the Indians had become what they have remained ever since, 
the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colo- 
nists of European stock. Relatively to their numbers, they 
have shown themselves far more to be dreaded than the Zulus 
or even the Maoris. 

Their presence has caused the process of settlement to go 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 15 

on at unequal rates of speed in different places ; the flood 
has been hemmed in at one point, or has been forced to flow 
round an island of native population at another. Had the In- 
dians been as helpless as the native Australians were, the con- 
tinent of North America would have had an altogether dif- 
ferent history. It would not only have been settled far more 
rapidly, but also on very different lines. Not only have the 
red men themselves kept back the settlements, but they have 
also had a very great effect upon the outcome of the struggles 
between the different intrusive European peoples. Had the 
original inhabitants of the Mississippi valley been as numerous 
and unwarlike as the Aztecs, De Soto would have repeated the 
work of Cortes, and we would very possibly have been barred 
out of the greater portion of our present domain. Had it 
not been for their Indian allies, it would have been impossible 
for the French to prolong, as they did, their struggle with their 
much more numerous English neighbors. 

The Indians have shrunk back before our advance only after 
fierce and dogged resistance. They were never numerous in the 
land, but exactly what their numbers were when the whites 
first appeared is impossible to tell. Probably an estimate of 
half a million for those within the limits of the present United 
States is not far wrong; but in any such calculation there is 
of necessity a large element of mere rough guesswork. For- 
merly writers greatly overestimated their original numbers, 
counting them by millions. Now it is the fashion to go to the 
other extreme, and even to maintain they have not decreased 
at all. This last is a theory that can only be upheld on the sup- 
position that the whole does not consist of the sum of the 
parts ; for whereas we can check off on our fingers the tribes 
that have slightly increased, we can enumerate scores that have 
died out almost before our eyes. Speaking broadly, they have 
mixed but little with the English (as distinguished from the 
French and Spanish) invaders. They are driven back, or die 
out, or retire to their own reservations ; but they are not often 
assimilated. Still, on every frontier, there is always a certain 

% 



i6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

amount of assimilation going on, much more than is commonly 
admitted ; ^ and whenever a French or Spanish community has 
been absorbed by the energetic Americans, a certain amount of 
Indian blood has been absorbed also. There seems to be a 
chance that in one part of our country, the Indian Territory, 
the Indians, who are continually advancing in civilization, will 
remain as the ground element of the population, like the Creoles 
in Louisiana, or the Mexicans in New Mexico. 

The Americans, when they became a nation, continued even 
more successfully the work which they had begun as citizens 
of the several English colonies. At the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution they still all dwelt on the seaboard, either on the coast 
itself or along the banks of the streams flowing into the At- 
lantic. When the fight at Lexington took place they had no 
settlements beyond the mountain chain on our western border. 
It had taken them over a century and a half to spread from 
the Atlantic to the Alleghanies. In the next three-quarters 
of a century they spread from the Alleghanies to the Pacific. 
In doing this they not only dispossessed the Indian tribes, 
but they also won the land from its European owners. Britain 
had to yield the territory between the Ohio and the Great 
Lakes. By a purchase, of which we frankly announced that 
the alternative would be war, we acquired from France the 
vast, ill-defined region known as Louisiana. From the Span- 
iards, or from their descendants, we won the lands of Florida, 
Texas, New Mexico, and California. 

All these lands were conquered after we had become a power, 
independent of every other, and one within our own borders 
— when we were no longer a loose assemblage of petty sea- 

^ To this I can testify of my own knowledge as regards Montana, Dakota, 
and Minnesota. The mixture usually takes place in the ranks of the pop- 
ulation where individuals lose all trace of their ancestry after two or three 
generations: so it is often honestly ignored, and sometimes mention of it 
is suppressed, the man regarding it as a taint. But I also know many very 
wealthy old frontiersmen whose half-breed children are now being edu- 
cated, generally at convent schools, while in the northwestern cities I could 
point out some very charming men and women, in the best society, with a 
strain of Indian blood in their veins. 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 17 

board communities, each with only such relationship to its 
neighbor as was implied in their common subjection to a for- 
eign king and a foreign people. Moreover, it is well always 
to remember that at the day when we began our career as a 
nation we already differed from our kinsmen of Britain in 
blood as well as in name; the word American already had 
more than a merely geographical signification. Americans 
belong to the English race only in the sense in which English- 
men belong to the German. The fact that no change of lan- 
guage has accompanied the second wandering of our people, 
from Britain to America, as it accompanied their first, from 
Germany to Britain, is due to the further fact that when 
the second wandering took place the race possessed a fixed 
literary language, and, thanks to the ease of communication, 
was kept in touch with the parent stock. The change of blood 
was probably as great in one case as in the other. The modern 
Englishman is descended from a Low-Dutch stock, which, 
when it went to Britain, received into itself an enormous in- 
fusion of Celtic, a much smaller infusion of Norse and Danish, 
and also a certain infusion of Norman-French blood. When 
this new English stock came to America it mingled with and 
absorbed into itself immigrants from many European lands, 
and the process has gone on ever since. It is to be noted 
that, of the new blood thus acquired, the greatest proportion 
has come from the Dutch and German sources, and the next 
greatest from Irish, while the Scandinavian element comes 
third, and the only other of much consequence is French Hu- 
guenot. Thus it appears that no new element of importance 
has been added to the blood. Additions have been made to 
the elemental race-strains in much the same proportion as these 
were originally combined. 

Some latter-day writers deplore the enormous immigration 
to our shores as making us a heterogeneous instead of a 
homogeneous people; but as a matter of fact we are less 
heterogeneous at the present day than we were at the outbreak 
of the Revolution. Our blood was as much mixed a century 



i8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ago as it is now. No State now has a smaller proportion of 
English blood than New York or Pennsylvania had in 1775. 
Even in New England, where the English stock is the purest, 
there was a certain French and Irish mixture ; in Virginia there 
were Germans in addition. In the other colonies, taken as a 
whole, it is not probable that much over half of the blood 
was English ; Dutch, French, German, and Gaelic communities 
abounded. 

But all were being rapidly fused into one people. As the 
Celt of Cornwall and the Saxon of Wessex are now alike Eng- 
lishmen, so in 1775 Hollander and Huguenot, whether in New 
York or South Carolina, had become Americans, undistinguish- 
able from the New Englanders and Virginians, the descendants 
of the men who followed Cromwell or charged behind Rupert. 
When the great Western movement began we were already 
a people by ourselves. Moreover, the immense immigration 
from Europe that has taken place since had little or no effect 
on the way in which we extended our boundaries; it only 
began to be important about the time when we acquired our 
present limits. These limits would in all probability be what 
they are now even if we had not received a single European 
colonist since the Revolution. 

Thus the Americans began their work of Western conquest 
as a separate and individual people, at the moment when they 
sprang into national life. It has been their great work ever 
since. All other questions, save those of the preservation of 
the Union itself and of the emancipation of the blacks, have 
been of subordinate importance when compared with the great 
ciuestion of how rapidly and how completely they were to sub- 
jugate that part of their continent lying between the eastern 
mountains and the Pacific. Yet the statesmen of the Atlantic 
seaboard were often unable to perceive this, and indeed fre- 
quently showed the same narrow jealousy of the communities 
beyond the Alleghanies that England felt for all America. Even 
if they were too broad-minded and far-seeing to feel thus, 
they yet were unable to fully appreciate the magnitude of 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 19 

the interests at stake in the West. They thought more of our 
right to the North Atlantic fisheries than of our ownership of 
the Mississippi valley; they were more interested in the fate 
of a bank or a tariff than in the settlement of the Oregon 
boundary. Most contemporary writers showed similar short- 
comings in their sense of historic perspective. The names of 
Ethan Allen and Marion are probably better known than is 
that of George Rogers Clark ; yet their deeds, as regards their 
effects, could no more be compared to his, than his could be 
compared to Washington's. So it was with Houston. During 
his lifetime there were probably fifty men who, east of the 
Mississippi, were deemed far greater than he was. Yet in 
most cases their names have already almost faded from re- 
membrance, while his fame will grow steadily brighter as the 
importance of his deeds is more thoroughly realized. For- 
tunately, in the long run, the mass of Easterners always backed 
up their Western brethren. 

The kind of colonizing conquest, whereby the people of the 
United States have extended their borders, has much in com- 
mon with the similar movements in Canada and Australia, all 
of them standing in sharp contrast to what has gone on in 
Spanish-American lands. But, of course, each is marked out 
in addition by certain peculiarities of its own. Moreover, even 
in the United States, the movement falls naturally into two 
divisions, which on several points differ widely from each 
other. 

The way in which the southern part of our Western country 
— that is, all the land south of the Ohio, and from thence 
on to the Rio Grande and the Pacific — was won and settled, 
stands quite alone. The region north of it was filled up in a 
very different manner. The Southwest, including therein what 
was once called simply the West, and afterward the Middle 
West, was won by the people themselves, acting as individuals, 
or as groups of individuals, who hewed out their own fortunes 
in advance of any governmental action. On the other hand, 
the Northwest, speaking broadly, was acquired by the govern- 



20 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ment, the settlers merely taking possession of what the whole 
country guaranteed them. The Northwest is essentially a na- 
tional domain ; it is fitting that it should be, as it is, not only 
by position but also by feeling, the heart of the nation. 

North of the Ohio the regular army went first. The settle- 
ments grew up behind the shelter of the federal troops of 
Hamar, St. Claire, and Wayne, and of their successors even 
to our own day. The wars in which the borderers them- 
selves bore any part were few and trifling compared to the 
contests waged by the adventurers who won Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, and Texas. 

In the Southwest the early settlers acted as their own army, 
and supplied both leaders and men. Sevier, Robertson, Clark, 
and Boone led their fellow pioneers to battle, as Jackson did 
afterward, and as Houston did later still. Indeed the south- 
westerners not only won their own soil for themselves, but 
they were the chief instruments in the original acquisition of 
the Northwest also. Had it, not been for the conquest of the 
Illinois towns in 1779 we would probably never have had any 
Northwest to settle ; and the huge tract between the upper Mis- 
sissippi and the Columbia, then called Upper Louisiana, fell 
into our hands only because the Kentuckians and Tennesseeans 
were resolutely bent on taking possession of New Orleans, 
either by bargain or battle. All of our territory lying beyond 
the Alleghanies, north and south, was first won for us by 
the southvvesterners, fighting for their own land. The north- 
ern part was afterward filled up by the thrifty, vigorous men 
of the Northeast, whose sons became the real rulers as well 
as the preservers of the Union ; but these settlements of North- 
erners were rendered possible only by the deeds of the nation as 
a whole. They entered on land that the Southerners had won, 
and they were kept there by the strong arm of the federal gov- 
ernment ; whereas the Southerners owed most of their victories 
only to themselves. 

The first comers around Marietta did, it is true, share to a 
certain extent in the dangers of the existing Indian wars; but 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 21 

their trials are not to be mentioned beside those endured by 
the early settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, and whereas these 
latter themselves subdued and drove out their foes, the former 
took but an insignificant part in the contest by which the pos- 
session of their land was secured. Besides, the strongest and 
most numerous Indian tribes were in the Southwest. 

The Southwest developed its civilization on its own lines, for 
good and for ill ; the Northwest was settled under the national 
ordinance of 1787, which absolutely determined its destiny, and 
thereby in the end also determined the destiny of the whole 
nation. Moreover, the Gulf coast, as well as the interior, from 
the Mississippi to the Pacific, was held by foreign powers; 
while in the North this was only true of the country between 
the Ohio and the Great Lakes during the first years of the 
Revolution, until the Kentucky backwoodsmen conquered it. 
Our rivals of European race had dwelt for generations along 
the lower Mississippi and the Rio Grande, in Florida, and in 
California, when we made them ours. Detroit, Vincennes, St. 
Louis, and New Orleans, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa 
Fe, and San Francisco are cities that were built by Frenchmen 
or Spaniards ; we did not found them, but conquered them. All 
but the first two are in the Southwest, and of these two, one 
was first taken and governed by south westerners. On the other 
hand, the northwestern cities, from Cincinnati and Chicago to 
Helena and Portland, were founded by our own people, by the 
people who now have possession of them. 

The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fight- 
ing with the original owners. The way in which this was done 
bears much less resemblance to the sudden filling up of Aus- 
tralia and California by the practically unopposed overflow 
from a teeming and civilized mother country, than it does to 
the original English conquest of Britain itself. The warlike 
borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the restless and 
reckless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of 
grim tenacity, overcame and displaced Indians, French, and 
Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before, 



22 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced the Cymric and 
Gaelic Celts. They were led by no one commander ; they acted 
under orders from neither king nor congress; they were not 
carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedience 
to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts, 
spurred ever onward by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, 
they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by 
so doing wrought out the destinies of a continental nation. 
They warred and settled from the high hill valleys of the 
French Broad and the upper Cumberland to the half -tropical 
basin of the Rio Grande, and to where the Golden Gate lets 
through the long-heaving waters of the Pacific. The story of 
how this was done forms a compact and continuous whole. 
The fathers followed Boone or fought at King's Mountain; 
the sons marched south with Jackson to overcome the Creeks 
and beat back the British; the grandsons died at the Alamo 
or charged to victory at San Jacinto. They were doing their 
share of a work that began with the conquest of Britain, that 
entered on its second and wider period after the defeat of 
the Spanish Armada, that culminated in the marvelous growth 
of the United States. The winning of the West and South- 
west is a stage in the conquest of a continent. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 

1763-1775 

THE result of England's last great colonial struggle with 
France was to sever from the latter all her American 
dependencies, her colonists becoming the subjects of 
alien and rival powers. England won Canada and the Ohio 
valley; while France ceded to her Spanish allies Louisiana, in- 
cluding therein all the territory vaguely bounded by the Missis- 
sippi and the Pacific. As an offset to this gain, Spain had 
herself lost to England both Floridas, as the coast regions 
between Georgia and Louisiana were then called. 

Thus the thirteen colonies, at the outset of their struggle 
for independence, saw themselves surrounded, north, south, and 
west, by lands where the rulers and the ruled were of dif- 
ferent races, but where rulers and ruled alike were hostile to 
the new people that was destined in the end to master them all. 

The present Province of Quebec, then called Canada, was 
already, what she has to this day remained, a French state 
acknowledging the English king as her overlord. Her interests 
did not conflict with those of our people, nor touch them in 
any way, and she has had little to do with our national history, 
and nothing whatever to do with the history of the West. 

In the peninsula of East Florida, in the land of the cypress, 
palmetto, and live-oak, of open savannas, of sandy pine forests, 
and impenetrable, interminable morasses, a European civiliza- 
tion more ancient than any in the English colonies was moulder- 
ing in slow decay. Its capital city was quaint St. Augustine, 
the old walled town that was founded by the Spaniards long 

23 



24 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

years before the keel of the Half-Moon furrowed the broad 
Hudson, or the ships of the Puritans sighted the New England 
coast. In times past St. Augustine had once and again seen 
her harbor filled with the huge, cumbrous hulls, and whitened 
by the bellying sails, of the Spanish war-vessels, when the fleets 
of the Catholic king gathered there, before setting out against 
the seaboard towns of Georgia and the Carolinas; and she had 
to suffer from and repulse the retaliatory inroads of the Eng- 
lish colonists. Once her priests and soldiers had brought the 
Indian tribes, far and near, under subjection, and had dotted 
the wilderness with fort and church and plantation, the out- 
posts of her dominion; but that was long ago, and the tide 
of Spanish success had turned and begun to ebb many years 
before the English took possession of Florida. The Seminoles, 
fierce and warlike, whose warriors fought on foot and on horse- 
back, had avenged in countless bloody forays their fellow In- 
dian tribes, whose very names had perished under Spanish rule. 
The churches and forts had crumbled into nothing; only the 
cannon and the brazen bells half buried in the rotting mould, 
remained to mark the place where once stood spire and citadel. 
The deserted plantations, the untravelled causeways, no longer 
marred the face of the tree-clad land, for even their sites had 
ceased to be distinguishable; the great highroad that led to 
Pensacola had faded away, overgrown by the rank luxuriance 
of the semitropical forest. Throughout the interior the painted 
savages roved at will, uncontrolled by Spaniard or English- 
man, owing allegiance only to the White Chief of Tallasotchee.^ 
St. Augustine, with its British garrison and its Spanish and 
Minorcan townsfolk,- was still a gathering-place for a few 
Indian traders, and for the scattered fishermen of the coast; 
elsewhere there were in all not more than a hundred families.^ 

* "Travels by William Bartram," Philadelphia, 1791, pp. 184, 231, 232, 
etc. The various Indian names are spelled in a dozen different ways.' 

'"Reise," etc. (in 1783 and 1784), by Johann David Schopf, 1788, H, 362. 
The Mmorcans were the most numerous and prosperous; then came the 
Spaniards, with a few Creoles, English, and Germans. 

•J. D. F. Smyth, "Tour in the United States" (1775), London, 1784, 
II, 35- 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 25 

Beyond the Chattahooche and the Appalachicola, stretching 
thence to the Mississippi and its delta, lay the more prosper- 
ous region of West Florida.^ Although taken by the English 
from Spain, there were few Spaniards among the people, who 
were controlled by the scanty British garrisons at Pensacola, 
Mobile, and Natchez. On the Gulf coast the inhabitants were 
mainly French Creoles. They were an indolent, pleasure-loving 
race, fond of dancing and merriment, living at ease in their 
low, square, roomy houses on the straggling, rudely farmed 
plantations that lay along the river-banks. Their black slaves 
worked for them; they themselves spent much of their time 
in fishing and fowling. Their favorite arm was the light fowl- 
ing-piece, for they were expert wing-shots ; " unlike the Ameri- 
can backwoodsman, who knew nothing of shooting on the 
wing, and looked down on smooth-bores, caring only for the 
rifle, the true weapon of the freeman. In winter, the Creoles 
took their negroes to the hills, where they made tar from the 
pitch-pine, and this they exported, as well as indigo, rice, 
tobacco, bear's oil, peltry, oranges, and squared timber. Cotton 
was grown, but only for home use. The British soldiers dwelt 
in stockaded forts, mounting light cannon; the governor lived 
in the high stone castle built of old by the Spaniards at Pen- 
sacola.^ 

In the part of West Florida lying along the east bank of the 
Mississippi, there were also some French Creoles and a few 
Spaniards, with, of course, negroes and Indians to boot. But 
the population consisted mainly of Americans from the old 
colonies, who had come thither by sea in small sailing vessels, 
or had descended the Ohio and the Tennessee in flatboats, or, 
perchance, had crossed the Creek country with pack-ponies, fol- 
lowing the narrow trails of the Indian traders. With them 

^Thid. 

'Memoire ou Coup-l'CEil Rapide sur mes differentes voyages et mon 
sejour dans la nation Creek, par Le Gal. Milfort, Tastanegy ou grand 
chef de guerre de la nation Creek et General de Brigade au service de la 
Republique Frangaise, Paris, 1802. Writing in 1781, he said Mobile con- 
tained about forty proprietary families, and was un petit paradis terrestre. 

* Bartram, 407. 



26 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

were some English and Scotch, and the Americans themselves 
had little sympathy with the colonies, feeling, instead, a certain 
dread and dislike of the rough Carolinian mountaineers, who 
were their nearest white neighbors on the east.^ They there- 
fore, for the most part, remained loyal to the Crown in the 
Revolutionary struggle, and suffered accordingly. 

When Louisiana was ceded to Spain, most of the French 
Creoles who formed her population were clustered together in 
the delta of the Mississippi; the rest were scattered out here 
and there, in a thin, dotted line, up the left bank of the river 
to the Missouri, near the mouth of which there were several 
small villages : St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St. Charles." A strong 
Spanish garrison held New Orleans, where the Creoles, discon- 
tented with their new masters, had once risen in a revolt that 
was speedily quelled and severely punished. Small garrisons 
were also placed in the different villages. 

Our people had little to do with either Florida or Louisiana 
until after the close of the Revolutionary War; but very early 
in that struggle, and soon after the movement west of the 
mountains began, we were thrown into contact with the French 
of the Northwestern Territory, and the result was of the 
utmost importance to the future welfare of the whole nation. 

This northwestern land lay between the Mississippi, the 
Ohio, and the Great Lakes. It now constitutes five of our 
large States and part of a sixth. But when independence was 
declared it was quite as much a foreign territory, considered 
from the standpoint of the old thirteen colonies, as Florida or 
Canada; the difference was that, whereas during the war we 
failed in our attempts to conquer Florida and Canada, we suc- 
ceeded in conquering the Northwest. The Northwest formed 
no part of our country as it originally stood; it had no por- 
tion in the Declaration of Independence. It did not revolt; it 
was conquered. Its inhabitants, at the outset of the Revo'lu- 

' Maf/acinc of American History, IV, 388. Letter of a New England 
settler in 1773. 

*"Annals of St. Louis," Frederic L. Billon, St. Louis, 1886. A valuable 
book. 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 27 

tion, no more sympathized with us, and felt no greater in- 
cHnation to share our fate, than did their kinsmen in Quebec 
or the Spaniards in St. Augustine. We made our first im- 
portant conquest during the Revolution itself — beginning thus 
early what was to be our distinguishing work for the next 
seventy years. 

These French settlements, which had been founded about the 
beginning of the century, when the English still clung to the 
estuaries of the seaboard, were grouped in three clusters, sepa- 
rated by hundreds of miles of wilderness. One of these 
clusters, containing something like a third of the total popu- 
lation, was at the straits, around Detroit.^ It was the seat 
of the British power in that section, and remained in British 
hands for twenty years after we had become a nation. 

The other two were linked together by their subsequent his- 
tory, and it is only with them that we have to deal. The village 
of Vincennes lay on the eastern bank of the Wabash, with 
two or three smaller villages tributary to it in the country 
roundabout ; and to the west, beside the Mississippi, far above 
where it is joined by the Ohio, lay the so-called Illinois towns, 
the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, with between them the 
little settlements of Prairie du Rocher and St. Philip.^ 

Both these groups of old French hamlets were in the fertile 
prairie region of what is now southern Indiana and Illinois. 
We have taken into our language the word prairie, because 

^In the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 2, is a census of 
Detroit itself, taken in 1773 by Philip Dejean, justice of the peace. Accord- 
ing to this there were 1,367 souls, of whom 85 were slaves; they dwelt in 
280 houses, with 157 barns, and owned 1,494 horned cattle, 628 sheep, and 
1,067 hogs. Acre is used as a measure of length ; their united farms had 
a frontage of 512, and went back from 40 to 80. Some of the people, it is 
specified, were not enumerated because they were out hunting or trading 
at the Indian villages. Besides the slaves, there were 93 servants. 

This only refers to the settlers of Detroit proper, and the farms adjoin- 
ing. Of the numerous other farms, and the small villages on both sides 
of the straits, and of the many families and individuals living as traders 
or trappers with the Indians, I can get no good record. Perhaps the total 
population tributary to Detroit was 2,000. It may have been over this. 
Any attempt to estimate this Creole population perforce contains much 
guesswork. 

'State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. Ill, p. 89. 



28 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

when our backwoodsmen first reached the land and saw the 
great natural meadows of long grass — sights unknown to the 
gloomy forests wherein they had always dwelt — they knew not 
what to call them, and borrowed the term already in use among 
the French inhabitants. 

The great prairies, level or rolling, stretched from north to 
south, separated by broad belts of high timber. Here and 
there copses of woodland lay like islands in the sunny seas of 
tall, waving grass. Where the rivers ran, their alluvial bot- 
toms were densely covered with trees and underbrush, and were 
often overflowed in the spring freshets. Sometimes the prairies 
were long, narrow strips of meadowland; again they were so 
broad as to be a day's journey across, and to the American, 
bred in a wooded country where the largest openings 
were the beaver meadows and the clearings of the frontier 
settlers, the stretches of grass-land seemed limitless. They 
abounded in game. The buffalo crossed and recrossed them, 
wandering to and fro in long files, beating narrow trails that 
they followed year in and year out; while bear, elk, and deer 
dwelt in the groves around the borders.^ 

There were, perhaps, some four thousand inhabitants in 
these French villages, divided almost equally between those in 
the Illinois and those along the Wabash.^ 

* State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. Ill, p. 89, Harmar's letter. 

"State Department 'MSS., No. 30, p. 453. Memorial of Frangois Car- 
bonneaux, agent for the inhabitants of the Illinois country, December 8, 
1784. "Innir hundred families [in the Illinois] exclusive of a like number 
at Post Vincent" [Vincennes]. Americans had then just begun to come in, 
but this enumeration did not refer to them. The population had decreased 
during the Revolutionary War ; so that at its outbreak there were probably 
altogether a thousand families. They were very prolific, and four to a 
family is probably not too great an allowance, even when we consider 
tliat in such a community on the frontier there are always plenty of soli- 
tary adventurers. Moreover, there were a number of negro slaves. Har- 
mar's letter of November 24, 1787. states the adult males of Kaskaskia 
and Cahdkia at four hundred and forty, not counting those at St. Philip 
or Prairie du Rocher. This tallies very well with the preceding. But of 
course the number given can only be considered appro.ximately accurate, 
and a passage in a letter of Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton would indicate 
that it was considerably smaller. 

This letter is to be found in the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 29 

The country came into the possession of the British — not of 
the colonial EngHsh or Americans — at the close of Pontiac's 
war, the aftermath of the struggle which decided against the 
French the ownership of America. It was held as a new Brit- 
ish province, not as an extension of any of the old colonies ; 
and finally, in 1774, by the famous Quebec Act, it was rendered 
an appanage of Canada, governed from the latter. It is a 
curious fact that England immediately adopted toward her 
own colonists the policy of the very nationality she had ousted. 
From the date of the triumphant peace won by Wolfe's victory, 
the British Government became the most active foe of the 
spread of the English race in America. This position Britain 
maintained for many years after the failure of her attempt 
to bar her colonists out of the Ohio valley. It was the position 
she occupied when at Ghent in 18 14 her commissioners tried to 
hem in the natural progress of her colonists' children by the 
erection of a great "neutral belt" of Indian Territory, guar- 
anteed by the British king. It was the role which her states- 
men endeavored to make her play when, at a later date, they 
strove to keep Oregon a waste rather than see it peopled by 
Americans. 

In the Northwest she succeeded to the French policy as well 
as the French position. She wished the land to remain a 
wilderness, the home of the trapper and the fur trader, of the 
Indian hunter and the French voyagcur. She desired it to be 
kept as a barrier against the growth of the seaboard colonies 
toward the interior. She regarded the new lands across the 

CXXIII, p. 53 ; it is the "brief account" of his ill-starred expedition against 
Vincennes. He says : "On taking an account of the Inhabitants of this 
place [Vincennes], of all ages and sexes, we found their number to amount 
to 621 ; of this 217 fit to bear arms on the spot, several being absent hunt- 
ing Buffaloe for their winter provision." But elsewhere in the same letter 
he alludes to the adult arms-bearing men as being three hundred in num- 
ber, and of course the outlying farms and small tributary villages are not 
counted in. This was in December, 1778. Possibly some families had left 
for the Spanish possessions after the war broke out, and returned after it 
was ended. But as all observers seem to unite in stating that the settle- 
ments either stood still or went backward during the Revolutionary strug- 
gle, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile the figures of Hamilton and 
Carbonneaux. 



30 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Atlantic as being won and settled, not for the benefit of the 
men who won and settled them, but for the benefit of the 
merchants and traders who stayed at home. It was this that 
rendered the Revolution inevitable; the struggle was a revolt 
against the whole mental attitude of Britain in regard to Amer- 
ica, rather than against any one special act or set of acts. The 
sins and shortcomings of the colonists had been many, and it 
would be easy to make out a formidable catalogue of grievances 
against them, on behalf of the mother country; but on the 
great underlying question they were wholly in the right, and 
their success was of vital consequence to the well-being of the 
race on this continent. 

Several of the old colonies urged vague claims to parts of the 
Northwestern Territory, basing them on ancient charters and 
Indian treaties ; but the British heeded them no more than 
the French had, and they were very little nearer fulfilment after 
the defeat of Montcalm and Pontiac than before. The French 
had held adverse possession in spite of them for sixty years ; 
the British held similar possession for fifteen more. The mere 
statement of the facts is enough to show the intrinsic worth- 
lessness of the titles. The Northwest was acquired from 
France by Great Britain through conquest and treaty; in a 
precisely similar way — Clark taking the place of Wolfe — it was 
afterward won from Britain by the United States. We gained 
it exactly as we afterward gained Louisiana, Florida, Oregon. 
California, New Mexico, and Texas — partly by arms, partly 
by diplomacy, partly by the sheer growth and pressure of our 
spreading population. The fact that the conquest took place 
just after we had declared ourselves a free nation, and while 
we were still battling to maintain our independence, does not 
alter its character in the least ; but it has sufficed to render the 
whole transaction very hazy in the minds of most subsequent 
historians, who generally speak as if the Northwest Territory 
had been part of our original possessions. 

The French who dwelt in the land were at the time little 
affected by the change which transferred their allegiance from 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 31 

one European king to another. They were accustomed to obey, 
without question, the orders of their superiors. They accepted 
the results of the war submissively, and yielded a passive obe- 
dience to their new rulers.-^ Some became rather attached to 
the officers who canj^ among them ; others grew rather to dis- 
like them; most felt merely a vague sentiment of distrust and 
repulsion, alike for the haughty British officer in his scarlet 
uniform, and for the reckless backwoodsman clad in tattered 
homespun or buckskin. They remained the owners of the vil- 
lages, the tillers of the soil. At first few English or American 
immigrants, save an occasional fur trader, came to live among 
them. But their doom was assured; their rule was at an end 
forever. For a while they were still to compose the bulk of 
the scanty population; but nowhere were they again to sway 
their own destinies. In after-years they fought for and against 
both whites and Indians ; they faced each other, ranged beneath 
the rival banners of Spain, England, and the insurgent colo- 
nists ; but they never again fought for their old flag or for 
their own sovereignty. 

From the overthrow of Pontiac to the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution, the settlers in the Illinois and round Vincennes lived 
in peace under their old laws and customs, which were con- 
tinued by the British commandants.- They had l:>een origi- 
nally governed, in the same way that Canada was, by the laws 
of France, adapted, however, to the circumstances of the new 
country. Moreover, they had local customs which were as 
binding as the laws. After the conquest the British com- 
mandants who came in acted as civil judges also. All public 
transactions were recorded in French by notaries public. Or- 
ders issued in English were translated into French so that 
they might be understood. Criminal cases were referred to 

^In the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 3, the letter of 
M. Ste. Marie from Vincennes, May 3, 1774, gives utterance to the gen- 
eral feeling of the Creoles, when he announces, in promising in their behalf 
to carry out the orders of the British commandant, that he is rcmplie de 
respect pour tout ce qui porte I'emprinte dc I'otorite [sic!]. 

^ State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 51. Statement of M. Cerre (or 
Carre), July, 1786, translated by John Pintard. 



k 



32 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

England. Before the conquest the prociirciir du roi gave sen- 
tence by his own personal decision in civil cases; if the matters 
were important, it was the custom for each party to name two 
arbitrators, and the procureur du roi a fifth; while an appeal 
might be made to the conscil siiperieiir at New Orleans. The 
British commandant assumed the place of the procureur du roi, 
although there were one or two half-hearted efforts made to 
introduce the Common Law. 

The original French commandants had exercised the power 
of granting to every person who petitioned as much land as 
the petitioner chose to ask for, subject to the condition that 
part of it should be cultivated within a year, under penalty 
of its reversion to "the king's demesnes." ^ The English fol- 
lowed the same custom. A large quantity of land was re- 
served in the neighborhood of each village for the common 
use, and a very small quantity for religious purposes. The 
common was generally a large patch of enclosed prairie, part 
of it being cultivated, and the remainder serving as a pasture 
for the cattle of the inhabitants.- The portion of the common 
set aside for agriculture was divided into strips of one arpent 
in front by forty in depth, and one or more allotted to each 
inhabitant according to his skill and industry as a cultivator.^ 
The arpent, as used by the western French, was a rather rough 
measure of surface, less in size than an acre.* The farms held 
by private ownership likewise ran back in long strips from a 
narrow front that usually lay along some stream.^ Several of 
them generally lay parallel to one another, each including some- 
thing like a hundred acres, but occasionally much exceeding this 
amount. 

The French inhabitants were in very many cases not of 
pure blood. The early settlements had been made by men only 

^ State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 51. Statement of 'j\I. Cerre (or 
Carre), July, 1786, translated by John Pintard. 

^ Ibid., p. 41. Petition of J. B. La Croix, A. Girardin, etc., dated "at 
Cohoe in the Illinois 15th July, 1786." ^Billon, 91. 

■"An arpent of land was 180 French feet square. MS. copy of Journal 
of Matthew Clarkson in 1766. In Durrett collection. 

''American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 11. 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 33 

— by soldiers, traders, and trappers, who took Indian wives. 
They were not trammelled by the queer pride which makes 
a man of English stock unwilling to make a red-skinned 
woman his wife, though anxious enough to make her his con- 
cubine. Their children were baptized in the little parish 
churches by the black-robed priests, and grew up holding the 
same position in the community as was held by their fellows, 
both of whose parents were white. But, in addition to these 
free citizens, the richer inhabitants owned both red and black 
slaves ; negroes imported from Africa, or Indians overcome 
and taken in battle.-^ There were many freedmen and f reed- 
women of both colors, and, in consequence, much mixture of 
blood. 

They were tillers of the soil, and some followed, in addi- 
tion, the trades of blacksmith and carpenter. Very many of 
them were trappers or fur traders. Their money was com- 
posed of furs and peltries, rated at a fixed price per pound ;^ 
none other was used unless expressly so stated in the contract. 
Like the French of Europe, their unit of value was the 
livre, nearly equivalent to the modern franc. They were 
not very industrious, nor very thrifty husbandmen. Their 
farming implements were rude, their methods of cultivation 
simple and primitive, and they themselves were often lazy and 
improvident. Near their town they had great orchards of 
gnarled apple-trees, planted by their forefathers when they 
came from France, and old pear-trees, of a kind unknown to 
the Americans; but their fields often lay untilled, while the 
owners lolled in the sunshine smoking their pipes. In con- 
sequence, they were sometimes brought to sore distress for 
food, being obliged to pluck their corn while it was still green. ^ 

^ Fergus Historical Series, No. 12, "Illinois in the i8th Century." Edward 
G. Mason, Chicago, 1881. A most excellent number of an excellent series. 
The old parish registers of Kaskaskia, going back to 1695, contain some 
remarkable names of the Indian mothers — such as Maria Aramipinchicoue 
and Domitilla Tehuigouanakigaboucoue. Sometimes the man is only dis- 
tinguished by some such title as "The Parisian," or "The Bohemian." 

' Billon, 90. 

* Letter of P. A. Laforge, December 31, 1786. Billon, 268. 



34 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The pursuits of the fur trader and fur trapper were far more 
congenial to them, and it was upon these that they chiefly 
depended. The half-savage life of toil, hardship, excitement, 
and long intervals of idleness attracted them strongly. This 
was perhaps one among the reasons why they got on so much 
better with the Indians than did the Americans, who, wherever 
they went, made clearings and settlements, cut down the trees, 
and drove off the game. 

But even these pursuits were followed under the ancient 
customs and usages of the country, leave to travel and trade 
being first obtained from the commandant;^ for the rule of 
the commandant was almost patriarchal. The inhabitants were 
utterly unacquainted with what the Americans called liberty. 
When they passed under our rule, it was soon found that it 
was impossible to make them understand such an institution 
as trial by jury; they throve best under the form of govern- 
ment to which they had been immemorially accustomed — a 
commandant to give them orders, with a few troops to back 
him up.^ They often sought to escape from these orders, but 
rarely to defy them; their lawlessness was like the lawlessness 
of children and savages ; any disobedience was always to a par- 
ticular ordinance, not to the system. 

The trader having obtained his permit, built his boats — 
whether light, roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark 
canoes, or pirogues, which were simply hollowed-out logs. He 
loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and 
rum, manned them with hardy voyagciirs, trained all their lives 
in the use of pole and paddle, and started off up or down the 
Mississippi,-'' the Ohio, or the Wabash, perhaps making a long 
carry or portage over into the Great Lakes. It took him weeks, 
often months, to get to the first trading-point, usually some 
large winter encampment of Indians. He might visit several 
of these, or stay the whole winter through at one, buying the 

* State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. Ill, p. 519. Letter of Joseph St. 
Marin, August 23, 1788. 
'Ibid., p. 89. Harmar's letter. 
*Ibid., p. 519. Letter of Joseph St. Marin. 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 35 

furs.^ Many of the French coiireiirs des hois, whose duty it 
was to traverse the wilderness, and who were expert trappers, 
took up their abode with the Indians, taught them how to catch 
the sable, fisher, otter, and beaver, and lived among them as 
members of the tribe, marrying the copper-colored squaws, and 
rearing dusky children. When the trader had exchanged his 
goods for the peltries of these red and white skin-hunters, he 
returned to his home, having been absent perhaps a year or 
eighteen months. It was a hard life; many a trader perished 
in the wilderness by cold or starvation, by an upset where the 
icy current ran down the rapids like a mill-race, by the attack 
of a hostile tribe, or even in a drunken brawl with the friendly 
Indians, when voyageur, half-breed, and Indian alike had been 
frenzied by draughts of fiery liquor.^ 

Next to the commandant, in power, came the priest. He 
bore unquestioned rule over his congregation, but only within 
certain limits; for the French of the backwoods, leavened by 
the presence among them of so many wild and bold spirits, 
could not be treated quite in the same way as the more peace- 
ful habitants of Lower Canada. The duty of the priest was 
to look after the souls of his sovereign's subjects, to baptize, 
marry, and bury them, to confess and absolve them, and keep 
them from backsliding, to say mass, and to receive the salary 
due him for celebrating divine service; but, though his per- 
sonal influence was, of course, very great, he had no temporal 
authority, and could not order his people either to fight or to 
work. Still less could he dispose of their land, a privilege in- 
hering only in the commandant and in the commissaries of 
the villages, where they were expressly authorized so to do 
by the sovereign.^ 

"■Ibid., p. 89. 

^Journal of Jean Baptiste Perrault, 1783; in "Indian Tribes," by Henry 
R. Schoolcraft, Part III, Philadelphia, 1855. See also Billon, 484, for an 
interesting account of the adventures of Gratiot, who afterward, under 
American rule, built up a great fur business, and drove a flourishing trade 
with Europe, as well as the towns of the American seaboard. 

' State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 25. A petition concerning a case 
in point, affecting the priest Gibault. 



36 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The average inhabitant, though often loose in his morals, 
was very religious. He was superstitious also, for he firmly 
believed in omens, charms, and witchcraft, and when worked 
upon by his dread of the unseen and the unknown, he some- 
times did terrible deeds, as will be related farther on. 

Under ordinary circumstances he was a good-humored,, 
kindly man, always polite — his manners offering an agreeable 
contrast to those of some of our own frontiersmen — with a 
ready smile and laugh, and ever eager to join in any merry- 
making. On Sundays and fast-days he was summoned to 
the little parish church by the tolling of the old bell in the 
small wooden belfry. The church was a rude oblong building, 
the walls made out of peeled logs, thrust upright in the ground, 
chinked with moss and coated with clay or cement. Thither 
every man went, clad in a capote or blanket coat, a bright 
silk handkerchief knotted round his head, and his feet shod 
with moccasins or strong rawhide sandals. If young, he walked 
or rode a shaggy pony; if older, he drove his creaking, spring- 
less wooden cart, untired and unironed, in which his family 
sat on stools.^ 

The grades of society were much more clearly marked than 
in similar communities of our own people. The gentry, al- 
though not numerous, possessed unquestioned social and po- 
litical headship and were the military leaders ; although, of 
course, they did not have anything like such marked pre-emi- 
nence of position as in Quebec or New Orleans, where the 
conditions were more like those obtaining in the Old World. 

""History of Vincennes," by Judge John Law, Vincennes, 1858, pp. 18 
and 140. They are just such carts as I have seen myself in the valley of 
the Red River, and in the big bend of the Missouri, carrying all the 
worldly goods of their owners, the French Metis. These Metis — ex-trap- 
pers, ex-buffalo runners, and small farmers — are the best representatives of 
the old French of the West ; they are a little less civilized, they have some- 
what more Indian blood in their veins, but they are substantially the same 
people. It may be noted that the herds of buffaloes that during the last 
century thronged the plains of what are now the States of Illinois and 
Indiana furnished to the French of Kaskaskia and Vincennes their winter 
meat ; exactly as during the present century the Saskatchewan Metis lived 
on the wild herds until they were exterminated. 



THE FRENCH OF THE OHIO VALLEY 37 

There was very little education. The common people were 
rarely versed in the mysteries of reading and writing/ and 
even the wives of the gentry were often only able to make their 
marks instead of signing their names. 

The little villages in which they dwelt were pretty places,^ 
with v/ide, shaded streets. The houses lay far apart, often a 
couple of hundred feet from one another. They were built of 
heavy hewn timbers; those of the better sort were furnished 
with broad verandas, and contained large, low-ceilinged rooms, 
the high mantel-pieces and the mouldings of the doors and 
windows being made of curiously carved wood. Each village 
was defended by a palisaded fort and blockhouses, and was 
occasionally itself surrounded by a high wooden stockade. The 
inhabitants were extravagantly fond of music and dancing;^ 
marriages and christenings were seasons of merriment, when 
the fiddles were scraped all night long, while the moccasined 
feet danced deftly in time to the music. 

Three generations of isolated life in the wilderness had 
greatly changed the characters of these groups of traders, 
trappers, bateau-men, and adventurous warriors. It was in- 
evitable that they should borrow many traits from their savage 
friends and neighbors. Hospitable, but bigoted to their old 
customs, ignorant, indolent, and given to drunkenness, they 
spoke a corrupt jargon of the French tongue; the common 
people were even beginning to give up reckoning time by 
months and years, and dated events, as the Indians did, with 
reference to the phenomena of nature, such as the time of the 
floods, the maturing of the green corn, or the ripening of the 

^ See the lists of signatures in the State Department 'MSS., also Mason's 
Kaskaskia Parish Records and Law's "Vincennes." As an example : the 
wife of the Chevalier Vinsenne (who gave his name to Vincennes, and 
afterward fell in the battle where the Chickasaws routed the northern 
French and their Indian allies) was only able to make her mark. 

Clark in his letters several times mentions the "gentry" in terms that 
imply their standing above the rest of the people. 

* State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. Ill, p. 89. 

"Journal of Jean Baptiste Perrault, 1783. 



38 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

strawberries.* All their attributes seemed alien to the polished 
army officers of old France ; ^ they had but little more in com- 
mon with the latter than with the American backwoodsmen. 
But they had kept many valuable qualities, and, in especial, 
they were brave and hardy, and, after their own fashion, 
good soldiers. They had fought valiantly beside King Louis's 
musketeers, and in alliance with the painted warriors of the 
forest; later on, they served, though perhaps with less heart, 
under the gloomy ensign of Spain, shared the fate of the red- 
coated grenadiers of King George, or followed the lead of 
the tall Kentucky riflemen. 

^"Voyage en Amerique (1796)," General Victor Collot, Paris, 1804, 
p. 318. 

'Ibid. Collot calls them "uncompose de traiteurs, d'aventuriers, de 
coureurs de bois, rameurs, et de guerriers ; ignorans, superstitieux et 
entetes, qu'aucunes fatigues, aucunes privations, aucunes dangers ne peuvent 
arreter dans leurs enterprises, qu'ils mettent toujours tin; ils n'ont conserve 
des vertus fran<jaises que le courage." 



CHAPTER III 

THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 

I 765-1 775 

WHEN we declared ourselves an independent nation 
there were on our borders three groups of Indian 
peoples. The northernmost were the Iroquois or Six 
Nations, who dwelt in New York, and stretched down into 
Pennsylvania. They had been for two centuries the terror of 
every other Indian tribe east of the Mississippi, as well as of 
the whites; but their strength had already departed. They 
numbered only some ten or twelve thousand, all told, and 
though they played a bloody part in the Revolutionary strug- 
gle, it was merely as subordinate allies of the British. It did 
not lie in their power to strike a really decisive blow. Their 
chastisement did not result in our gaining new territory; nor 
would a failure to chastise them have affected the outcome 
of the war nor the terms of peace. Their fate was bound up 
with that of the king's cause in America and was decided 
wholly by events unconnected with their own success or defeat. 
The very reverse was the case with the Indians, tenfold more 
numerous, who lived along our western frontier. There they 
were themselves our main opponents, the British simply acting 
as their supporters ; and instead of their fate being settled by 
the treaty of peace with Britain, they continued an active war- 
fare for twelve years after it had been signed. Had they de- 
feated us in the early years of the contest, it is more than 
probable that the Alleghanies would have been made our west- 
ern boundary at the peace. We won from them vast stretches 
of territory because we had beaten their warriors, and we could 

39 



40 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

not have won it otherwise, whereas the territory of the Iroquois 
was lost, not because of their defeat, but because of the defeat 
of the British. 

There were two great groups of these Indians, the ethnic 
corresponding roughly with the geographic division. In the 
Northwest, between the Ohio and the Lakes, were the Algon- 
quin tribes, generally banded loosely together; in the South- 
west, between the Tennessee — then called the Cherokee — and 
the Gulf, the so-called Appalachians lived. Between them lay 
a vast and beautiful region where no tribe dared dwell, but 
into which all ventured now and then for war and hunting. 

The southwestern Indians were called Appalachians by the 
olden writers, because this was the name then given to the 
southern Alleghanies. It is doubtful if the term has any exact 
racial significance ; but it serves very well to indicate a number 
of Indian nations whose system of government, ways of life, 
customs, and general culture were much alike, and whose civili- 
zation was much higher than was that of most other American 
tribes. 

The Appalachians were in the barbarous, rather than in the 
merely savage state. They were divided into five lax con- 
federacies : the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and 
Seminoles. The latter were merely a southern offshoot of 
the Creeks or Muscogees. They were far mor numerous 
than the northwestern Indians, were less nomadic, and, in 
consequence, had more definite possession of particular locali- 
ties; so that their lands were more densely peopled. 

In all they amounted to perhaps seventy thousand souls. ^ 

* Letters of Commissioners Hawkins, Pickens, Martin, and Mcintosh to 
the President of the Continental Congress, December 2, 1785. (Given in 
Senate Documents, 33d Congress, 2d session, Boundary between Ga. and 
Fla.) They give 14,200 "gun-men," and say that "at a moderate calcula- 
tion" there are four times as many old men, women, and children as there 
are gun-men. The estimates of the numbers are very numerous and very 
conflicting. After carefully consulting all accessible authorities, I have 
come to the conclusion that the above is probably pretty near the truth. 
It is the deliberate, official opinion of four trained experts, who had ample 
opportunities for investigation, and who examined the matter with care. 
But it is very possible that in allotting the several tribes their numbers 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 41 

It is more difficult to tell the numbers of the different tribes; 
for the division lines between them were very ill defined, and 
were subject to wide fluctuations. Thus the Creeks, the most 
formidable of all, were made up of many bands, differing from 
each other both in race and speech. The language of the 
Chickasaws and Choctaws did not differ more from the tongue 
of the Cherokees than the two divisions of the latter did from 
each other. The Cherokees of the hills, the Otari, spoke a 
dialect that could not be understood by the Cherokees of the 
lowlands, or Erati. Towns or bands continually broke up and 
split off from their former associations, while ambitious and 
warlike chiefs kept forming new settlements, and, if successful, 
drew large numbers of young warriors from the older com- 
munities. Thus the boundary-lines between the confederacies 
were ever shifting.^ Judging from a careful comparison of 
the different authorities, the following estimate of the num- 
bers of the Southern tribes at the outbreak of the Revolution 
may be considered as probably approximately correct. 

The Cherokees, some twelve thousand strong,- were the 

they err now and then, as the boundaries between the tribes shifted con- 
tinually, and there were always large communities of renegades, such as 
the Chickamaugas, who were drawn from the ranks of all. 

^ This is one of the main reasons why the estimates of their numbers 
vary so hopelessly. As a specimen case, among many others, compare the 
estimate of Professor Benjamin Smith Barton ("Origin of the Tribes and 
Nations of America," Philadelphia, 1798) with the report of the Commis- 
sioner of Indian Affairs for 1827. Barton estimated that in 1793 the 
Appalachian nations numbered in all 13,000 warriors ; considering these 
as one-fifth of the total population, makes it 65,000. In 1837, the Com- 
missioner reports their numbers at 65,304 — almost exactly the same. Prob- 
ably both statements are nearly correct, the natural rate of increase having 
just about offset the loss in consequence of a partial change of home, and 
of Jackson's slaughtering wars against the Creeks and Seminoles. But 
where they agree in the total, they vary hopelessly in the details. By 
Barton's estimate, the Cherokees numbered but 7,500, the Choctaws 30,000 ; 
by the Commissioner's census the Cherokees numbered 21,911, the Choc- 
taws 15,000. It is of course out of the question to believe that while in 
forty-four years the Cherokees had increased threefold, the Choctaws had 
diminished one-half. The terms themselves must have altered their sig- 
nificance or else there was extensive intertribal migration. Similarly, 
according to the reports, the Creeks had increased by 4,000 — the Seminoles 
and Choctaws had diminished by 3,000. 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, III, 790. Drayton's account, Sep- 
tember 23, 1775. This was a carefully taken census, made by the Indian 



42 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

mountaineers of their race. They dwelt among the blue-topped 
ridges and lofty peaks of the southern AUeghanies/ in the 
wild and picturesque region where the present States of Ten- 
nessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas join one another. 

To the west of the Cherokees, on the banks of the Missis- 
sippi, were the Chickasaws, the smallest of the Southern na- 
tions, numbering at the outside but four thousand souls ; ^ but 
they were also the bravest and most warlike, and of all these 
tribal confederacies theirs was the only one which was at all 
closely knit together. The whole tribe acted in unison. In 
consequence, though engaged in incessant warfare with the 
far more numerous Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, they 
more than held their own against them all ; besides having in- 
flicted on the French two of the bloodiest defeats they ever 
suffered from Indians, Most of the remnants of the Natchez, 
the strange sun-worshippers, had taken refuge with the Chicka- 
saws and become completely identified with them, when their 
own nationality was destroyed by the arms of New Orleans. 

The Choctaws, the rudest and, historically, the least im- 
portant of these Indians, lived south of the Chickasaws. They 
were probably rather less numerous than the Creeks. ^ Though 

traders. Apart from the outside communities such as the Chickamaugas 
at a later date, there were : 

"jzy gun-men in the lo overhill towns 

908 " " 23 middle '* 

356 " " 9 lower " 

a total of 2,001 warriors. The outlying towns, who had cast off their 
allegiance for the time being, would increase the amount by three or four 
hundred more. 

^ "History of the American Indians, Particularly Those Nations Adjoin- 
ing to the Mississippi, East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North 
Carolina, and Virginia." By James Adair (an Indian trader and resident 
in the country for forty years), London, 1775. A very valuable book, but 
a good deal marred by the author's irrepressible desire to twist every 
Indian utterance, habit, and ceremony into a proof that they are descended 
from the Ten Lost Tribes. He gives the number of Cherokee warriors 
at 2,300. 

^ Hawkins, Pickens, Martin, and Mcintosh, in their letter, give them 
800 warriors ; most other estimates make the number smaller. 

'Almost all the early writers make them more numerous, Adair gives 
them 4,500 warriors, Hawkins 6,000. But much less seems to have been 
known about them than about the Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws; 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 43 

accounted brave, they were treacherous and thievish, and were 
not as well armed as the others. They rarely made war or 
peace as a unit, parties frequently acting in conjunction with 
some of the rival European powers, or else joining in the 
plundering inroads made by the other Indians upon the white 
settlements. Beyond thus furnishing auxiliaries to our other 
Indian foes, they had little to do with our history. 

The Muscogees or Creeks were the strongest of all. Their 
Southern bands, living in Florida, were generally considered 
as a separate confederacy, under the name of Seminoles. They 
numbered between twenty-five and thirty thousand souls, ^ 
three- fourths of them being the Muscogees proper, and the 
remainder Seminoles. They dwelt south of the Cherokees and 
east of the Choctaws, adjoining the Georgians. 

The Creeks and Cherokees were thus by their position the 
barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of 
our advance, and who acted as a bufifer between us and the 
French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. 
Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and Choc- 
taws inevitably followed. 

The customs and the political and social systems of these 
two tribes were very similar; and those of their two western 
neighbors were merely ruder copies thereof. They were very 
much further advanced than were the Algonquin nations of 
the North. 

Unlike most mountaineers, the Cherokees were not held to 
be very formidable fighters, when compared with their fellows 
of the lowlands.^ In 1760 and 1761 they had waged a fierce 
war with the whites, had ravaged the Carolina borders, had cap- 

and most early estimates of Indians were largest when made of the least- 
known tribes. Adair's statement is probably the most trustworthy. The 
first accurate census showed the Creeks to be more numerous. 

^Hawkins, Pickens, etc., make them "at least" 27,000 in 1789; the Indian 
report for 1837 makes them 26,844. During the half-century they had 
suffered from devastating wars and forced removals, and had probably 
slightly decreased in number. In Adair's time their population was 
increasing. 

^ "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 95. Letter of Charles Lee. 



44 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tured British forts, and successfully withstood British armies; 
but though they had held their own in the field, it had been 
at the cost of ruinous losses. Since that period they had been 
engaged in long wars with the Chickasaws and Creeks, and had 
been worsted by both. Moreover, they had been much harassed 
by the Northern Indians. So they were steadily declining in 
power and numbers.-^ 

Though divided linguistically into two races, speaking dif- 
ferent dialects, the Otari and Erati, the political divisions did 
not follow the lines of language. There were three groups 
of towns, the upper, lower, and middle; and these groups 
often acted independently of one another. The upper towns 
lay for the most part on the Western Waters, as they were 
called by the Americans — the streams running into the Ten- 
nessee. Their inhabitants were known as Overhill Cherokees 
and were chiefly Otari; but the towns were none of them 
permanent, and sometimes shifted their positions, even chang- 
ing from one group to another. The lower towns, inhabited 
by the Erati, lay in the flat lands of upper Georgia and South 
Carolina, and were the least important. The third group, 
larger than either of the others, and lying among the hills 
and mountains between them, consisted of the middle towns. 
Its borders were ill marked and were ever shifting. 

Thus the towns of the Cherokees stretched from the high 
upland region, where rise the loftiest mountains of eastern 
America, to the warm, level, low country, the land of the 
cypress and the long-leafed pine. Each village stood by itself, 
in some fertile river-bottom, with around it apple-orchards and 
fields of maize. Like the other Southern Indians, the Chero- 
kees were more industrious than their Northern neighbors, 
lived by tillage and agriculture as much as by hunting, and 
kept horses, hogs, and poultry. The oblong, story-high houses 
were made of peeled logs, mortised into each other and plas- 
tered with clay; while the roof was of chestnut bark or of big 
shingles. Near to each stood a small cabin, partly dug out 

^ Adair, 227. Bartram, 390. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 45 

of the ground, and in consequence very warm; to this the in- 
mates retired in winter, for they were sensitive to cold. In 
the centre of each village stood the great council-house or 
rotunda, capable of containing the whole population; it was 
often thirty feet high, and sometimes stood on a raised mound 
of earth.^ 

The Cherokees were a bright, intelligent race, better fitted 
to follow the "white man's road" than any other Indians. Like 
their neighbors, they were exceedingly fond of games of chance 
and skill, as well as of athletic sports. One of the most 
striking of their national amusements was the kind of ball- 
play from which we derive the game of lacrosse. The imple- 
ments consisted of ball-sticks, or rackets, two feet long, strung 
with rawhide webbing, and of a deerskin ball, stuffed with 
hair, so as to be very solid, and about the size of a baseball. 
Sometimes the game was played by fixed numbers, some- 
times by all the young men of a village; and there were often 
tournaments between different towns and even different tribes. 
The contests excited the most intense interest, were waged 
with desperate resolution, and were preceded by solemn dances 
and religious ceremonies ; they were tests of tremendous physi- 
cal endurance, and were often very rough, legs and arms 
being occasionally broken. The Choctaws were considered to 
be the best ball-players.^ 

The Cherokees were likewise fond of dances. Sometimes 
these were comic or lascivious, sometimes they were religious 
in their nature, or were undertaken prior to starting on the 
war trail. Often the dances of the young men and maidens 
were very picturesque. The girls, dressed in white, with silver 
bracelets and gorgets, and a profusion of gay ribbons, danced 
in a circle in two ranks; the young warriors, clad in their 
battle finery, danced in a ring around them; all moving in 
rhythmic step, as they kept time to the antiphonal chanting ^ 
and singing, the young men and girls responding alternately 
to each other. 

^ Bartram, 365. 'Adair, Bartram. 'Bartram. 



46 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The great confederacy of the Muscogees or Creeks, con- 
sisting of numerous tribes, speaking at least five distinct lan- 
guages, lay in a well-watered land of small timber.^ The rapid 
streams were bordered by narrow flats of rich soil, and were 
margined by cane-brakes and reed beds. There were fine open 
pastures, varied by sandy pine barrens, by groves of palmetto 
and magnolia, and by great swamps and cypress ponds. The 
game had been largely killed out, the elk and buffalo having 
been exterminated, and even the deer much thinned, and, in 
consequence, the hunting-parties were obliged to travel far into 
the uninhabited region to the northward in order to kill their 
winter supply of meat. But panthers, wolves, and bears still 
lurked in the gloomy fastnesses of the swamps and cane-brakes, 
whence they emerged at night to prey on the hogs and cattle. 
The bears had been exceedingly abundant at one time ; so much 
so as to become one of the main props of the Creek larder, 
furnishing flesh, fat, and especially oil for cooking and other 
purposes; and so valued were they that the Indians hit upon 
the novel plan of preserving them, exactly as Europeans pre- 
serve deer and pheasants. Each town put aside a great tract 
of land, which was known as the "beloved bear grounds," - 
where the persimmons, haws, chestnuts, muscadines, and fox- 
grapes abounded, and let the bears dwell there unmolested, 
except at certain seasons, when they were killed in large num- 
bers. However, cattle were found to be more profitable than 
bears, and the "beloved bear grounds" were by degrees changed 
into stock ranges.^ 

^"A Sketch of the Creek Country," Benjamin Hawkins. In Coll. Ga. 
Hist. Soc. Written in 1798, but not published till fifty years afterward. 

'Ibid., p. 33. 

' The use of the word "beloved" by the Creeks was quite peculiar. It 
is evidently correctly translated, for Milfort likewise gives it as bicn aime. 
It was the title used for anything held in especial regard, whether for 
economic or supernatural reasons ; and sometimes it was used as Western 
tribes use the word "medicine" at the present day. The old chiefs and 
conjurers were called the "beloved old men"; what in the West we would 
now call the "medicine squaws" were named the "beloved^ old_ women." 
It was often conferred upon the chief dignitaries of the whites in writing 
to them. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 47 

The Creeks had developed a very curious semiciviHzation 
of their own. They Hved in many towns, of which the larger, 
or old towns, bore rule over the smaller,^ and alone sent 
representatives to the general councils. Many of these were as 
large as any in the back counties of the colonies ; ^ but they 
were shifted from time to time, as the game was totally killed 
off, and the land exhausted by the crops. ^ The soil then 
became covered by a growth of pines, and a so-called "old 
field" was formed. This method of cultivation was, after all, 
much like that of the Southern whites, and the "old fields," 
or abandoned plantations grown up with pines, were common 
in the colonies. 

Many of the chiefs owned droves of horses and horned 
cattle, sometimes as many as five hundred head,^ besides hogs 
and poultry; and some of them in addition had negro slaves. 
But the tillage of the land was accomplished by communal 
labor; and, indeed, the government, as well as the system 
of life, was in many respects a singular compound of com- 
munism and extreme individualism. The fields of rice, corn, 
tobacco, beans, and potatoes were sometimes rudely fenced 
in with split hickory poles, and were sometimes left unfenced, 
with huts or high scaffolds, where watchers kept guard. They 
were planted when the wild fruit was so ripe as to draw 
off the birds, and, while ripening, the swine were kept penned 
up and the horses were tethered with tough bark ropes. Pump- 
kins, melons, marshmallows, and sunflowers were often grown 
between the rows of corn. The planting as done on a given 
day, the whole town being summoned; no man was excepted 
or was allowed to go out hunting. The under head man super- 
vised the work.^ 

For food they used all these vegetables, as well as beef 
and pork, and venison stewed in bear's oil; they had hominy 

^ Hawkins, 2i7- 

'Bartram, 386. The Uchee town contained at least 1,500 people. 

'Ibid. "Hawkins, 30. " /fctU, 39 ; Adair, 408. 



48 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and corn cakes, and a cool drink made from honey and water/ 
besides another made from fermented corn, which tasted much 
Hke cider.^ They sifted their flour in wickerwork sieves, and 
baked the bread in kettles or on broad thin stones. Moreover, 
they gathered the wild fruits, strawberries, grapes, and plums, 
in their season, and out of the hickory-nuts they made a 
thick, oily paste, called hickory milk. 

Each town was built around a square, in which the old 
men lounged all day long, gossiping and wrangling. Fronting 
the square, and surrounding it, were the four long, low com- 
munal houses, eight feet high, sixteen feet deep, and forty to 
sixty in length. They were wooden frames, supported on 
pine posts, with roof-tree and rafters of hickory. Their fronts 
were open piazzas, their sides were lathed and plastered, some- 
times with white marl, sometimes with reddish clay, and they 
had plank doors and were roofed neatly with cypress bark 
or clapboards. The eave boards were of soft poplar. The bar- 
rier towns, near white or Indian enemies, had log houses, with 
port-holes cut in the walls. 

The communal houses were each divided into three rooms. 
The House of the Micos, or Chiefs and Head Men, was painted 
red, and fronted the rising sun; it was highest in rank. The 
Houses of the Warriors and the Beloved Men — this last being 
painted white — fronted south and north respectively, while the 
House of the Young People stood opposite that of the Micos. 
Each room was divided into two terraces ; the one in front 
being covered with red mats, while that in the rear, a kind of 
raised dais or great couch, was strewn with skins. They con- 
tained stools hewed out of poplar logs, and chests made of clap- 
boards sewed together with buffalo thongs.^ 

The rotunda or council-house stood near the square on the 
highest spot in the village. It was round, and fifty or sixty 
feet across, with a high-peaked roof ; the rafters were fastened 
with splints and covered with bark. A raised dais ran around 

* Bartram, 184. ' Milfort, 212. 

' Hawkins, 67. Milfort, 203. Bartram, 386. Adair, 418. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 49 

the wall, strewed with mats and skins. Sometimes in the larger 
council-houses there were painted eagles, carved out of poplar 
wood, placed close to the red and white seats where the chiefs 
and warriors sat; or in front of the broad dais were great 
images of the full and the half moon, colored white or black; 
or rudely carved and painted figures of the panther, and of men 
with buffalo horns. The tribes held in reverence both the 
panther and the rattlesnake. 

The corn-cribs, fowl-houses, and hothouses or dugouts for 
winter use were clustered near the other cabins. 

Although in tillage they used only the hoe, they had made 
much progress in some useful arts. They spun the coarse wool 
of the bufifalo into blankets, which they trimmed with beads. 
They wove the wild hemp in frames and shuttles. They made 
their own saddles. They made beautiful baskets of fine cane 
splints, and very handsome blankets of turkey feathers; while 
out of glazed clay they manufactured bowls, pitchers, platters, 
and other pottery. 

In summer they wore buckskin shirts and breech-clouts; in 
winter they were clad in the fur of the bear and wolf, or 
of the shaggy bufifalo. They had moccasins of elk or bufifalo 
hide, and high thigh-boots of thin deerskin, ornamented with 
fawns' trotters, or turkey spurs that tinkled as they walked. 
In their hair they braided eagle-plumes, hawk-wings, or the 
brilliant plumage of the tanager and redbird. Trousers or 
breeches of any sort they despised as marks of efifeminacy. 

Vermilion was their war emblem; white was only worn at 
the time of the Green-Corn Dance. In each town stood the 
war-pole or painted post, a small peeled tree trunk colored 
red. Some of their villages were called white or peace towns; 
others red or bloody towns. The white towns were sacred to 
peace; no blood could be spilled within their borders. They 
were towns of refuge, where not even an enemy taken in 
war could be slain ; and a murderer who fled thither was safe 
from vengeance. The captives were tortured to death in the 



50 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

red towns, and it was in these that the chiefs and warriors 
gathered when they were planning or preparing for war. 

They held great marriage feasts ; the dead were burned with 
the goods they had owned in their Hfetime, 

Every night all the people of a town gathered in the council- 
house to dance and sing and talk. Besides this, they held there 
on stated occasions the ceremonial dances; such were the 
dances of war and of triumph, when the warriors, painted red 
and black, returned, carrying the scalps of their slain foes 
on branches of evergreen pine, while they chanted the sonor- 
ous song of victory; and such was the Dance of the Serpent, 
the dance of lawless love, where the women and young girls 
were allowed to do whatsoever they listed. 

Once a year, when the fruits ripened, they held the Green- 
Corn Dance, a religious festival that lasted eight days in 
the larger towns and four in the smaller. Then they fasted 
and feasted alternately. They drank out of conch-shells the 
Black Drink, a bitter beverage brewed from the crushed leaves 
of a small shrub. On the third day the high priest or fire- 
maker, the man who sat in the white seat, clad in snowy tunic 
and moccasins, kindled the holy fire, fanning it into flames 
with the unsullied wing of a swan, and burning therein offer- 
ings of the first-fruits of the year. Dance followed dance. 
The beloved men and beloved women, the priest and priestess, 
danced in three rings, singing the solemn song of which the 
words were never uttered at any other time; and at the end 
the warriors, in their wild war-gear, with white-plume head- 
dresses, took part, and also the women and girls, decked in 
their best, with earrings and armlets, and terrapin shells filled 
with pebbles fastened to the outside of their legs. They kept 
time with foot and voice, the men in deep tones, with short 
accents, the women in a shrill falsetto ; while the clay drums, 
with heads of taut deer-hide, were beaten, the whistles blown, 
and the gourds and calabashes rattled, until the air resounded 
with the deafening noise.* 

* Hawkins and Adair, passim. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 51 

Though they sometimes burnt their prisoners and violated 
captive women, they generally were more merciful than the 
Northern tribes.^ 

But their political and military systems could not compare 
with those of the Algonquins, still less with those of the 
Iroquois. Their confederacy was of the loosest kind. There 
was no central authority. Every town acted just as it pleased, 
making war or peace with the other towns, or with whites, 
Choctaws, or Cherokees. In each there was a nominal head 
for peace and war, the high chief and the head warrior ; the 
former was supposed to be supreme, and was elected for life 
from some one powerful family — as, for instance, the families 
having for their totems the wind or the eagle. But these chiefs 
had little control, and could not do much more than influence 
or advise their subjects; they were dependent on the will 
of the majority. Each town was a little hotbed of party spirit ; 
the inhabitants divided on almost every question. If the head 
chief was for peace, but the war-chief nevertheless went on 
the war-path, there was no way of restraining him. It was 
said that never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, had 
half the nation "taken the war talk" at the same time.- As a 
consequence, war-parties of Creeks were generally merely small 
bands of marauders in search of scalps and plunder. In pro- 
portion to its numbers, the nation never, until 18 13, under- 
took such formidable military enterprises as were undertaken 
by the Wyandots, Shawnees, and Delawares ; and, though very 
formidable individual fighters, even in this respect it may be 
questioned if the Creeks equalled the prowess of their Northern 
kinsmen. 

Yet when the Revolutionary War broke out, the Creeks were 
under a chieftain whose consummate craft and utterly selfish 
but cool and masterly diplomacy enabled them for a genera- 
tion to hold their own better than any other native race against 
the restless Americans. This was the half-breed Alexander 

^Ibid. Also vide Bartram. '^ Hawkins, 29, 70. Adair, 428. 



52 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

McGillivray, perhaps the most gifted man who was ever born 
on the soil of Alabama.^ 

His father was a Scotch trader, Lachlan McGilHvray by 
name, who came when a boy to Charleston, then the head- 
quarters of the commerce carried on by the British with the 
Southern Indians. On visiting the traders' quarter of the 
town, the young Scot was strongly attracted by the sight of 
the weather-beaten packers, with their gaudy, half -Indian 
finery, their hundreds of pack-horses, their curious pack-sad- 
dles, and their bales of merchandise. Taking service with 
them, he was soon helping to drive a pack-train along one of 
the narrow trails that crossed the lonely pine wilderness. To 
strong, coarse spirits, that were both shrewd and daring, and 
willing to balance the great risks incident to their mode of 
life against its great gains, the business was most alluring. 
Young Lachlan rose rapidly, and soon became one of the 
richest and most influential traders in the Creek country. 

Like most traders, he married into the tribe, wooing and 
wedding, at the Hickory Ground, beside the Coosa River, a 
beautiful half-breed girl, Sehoy Marchand, whose father had 
been a French officer, and whose mother belonged to the 
powerful Creek family of the Wind. There were born to them 
two daughters and one son, Alexander. All the traders, though 
facing danger at every moment, from the fickle and jealous 
temper of the savages, wielded immense influence over them, 
and none more than the elder McGillivray, a far-sighted, un- 
scrupulous Scotchman, who sided alternately with the French 
and English interests, as best suited his own policy and for- 
tunes. 

His son was felt by the Creeks to be one of themselves. He 
was born about 1746, at Little Tallasee, on the banks of the 
clear-flowing Coosa, where he lived till he was fourteen years 
old, playing, fishing, hunting, and bathing with the other In- 
dian boys, and listening to the tales of the old chiefs and war- 

* "History of Alabama," by Albert James Pickett, Charleston, 1851, II, 30. 
A valuable work. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 53 

riors. He was then taken to Charleston, where he was well 
educated, being taught Greek and Latin, as well as English 
history and literature. Tall, dark, slender, with commanding 
figure and immovable face, of cool, crafty temper, with great 
ambition and a keen intellect, he felt himself called to play no 
common part. He disliked trade, and at the first opportunity 
returned to his Indian home. He had neither the moral nor 
the physical gifts requisite for a warrior; but he was a con- 
summate diplomat, a born leader, and perhaps the only man 
who could have used aright such a rope of sand as was the 
Creek confederacy. 

The Creeks claimed him as of their own blood, and instinc- 
tively felt that he was their only possible ruler. He was forth- 
with chosen to be their head chief. From that time on he 
remained among them, at one or the other of his plantations, 
his largest and his real home being at Little Tallasee, where 
he lived in barbaric comfort, in a great roomy log house with 
a stone chimney, surrounded by the cabins of his sixty negro 
slaves. He was supported by many able warriors, both of the 
half and the full blood. One of them is worthy of passing 
mention. This was a young French adventurer, Milfort, who, 
in 1776, journeyed through the insurgent colonies, and be- 
came an adopted son of the Creek nation. He first met 
McGillivray, then in his early manhood, at the town of Coweta, 
the great war town on the Chattahoochee, where the half- 
breed chief, seated on a bearskin in the council-house, sur- 
rounded by his wise men and warriors, was planning to give 
aid to the British. Afterward he married one of McGillivray's 
sisters, whom he met at a great dance — a pretty girl, clad in 
a short silk petticoat, her chemise of fine linen clasped with 
silver, her earrings and bracelets of the same metal, and with 
bright-colored ribbons in her hair.^ 

* 'Milfort, 23, 326. Milfort's book is very interesting, but as the man him- 
self was evidently a hopeless liar and braggart, it can only be trusted where 
it was not for his interest to tell a falsehood. His book was written after 
McGillivray's death, the object being to claim for himself the glory of 
belonging to the half-breed chief. He insisted that he was the war-chief, 



54 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The task set to the son of Sehoy was one of incredible 
difficulty, for he was head of a loose array of towns and 
tribes from whom no man could get perfect, and none but 
himself even imperfect, obedience. The nation could not stop 
a town from going to war, nor, in turn, could a town stop its 
own young men from committing ravages. Thus the whites 
were always being provoked, and the frontiersmen were mo- 
lested as often when they were quiet and peaceful as when they 
were encroaching on Indian land. The Creeks owed the land 
which they possessed to murder and rapine; they mercilessly 
destroyed all weaker communities, red or white; they had no 
idea of showing justice or generosity toward their fellows who 
lacked their strength, and now the measure they had meted 
so often to others was at last to be meted to them. If the 
whites treated them well, it was set down to weakness. It was 
utterly impossible to restrain the young men from murdering 
and plundering, either the neighboring Indians or the white 
settlements. Their one ideal of glory was to get scalps, and 
these the young braves were sure to seek, no matter how 
much the older and cooler men might try to prevent them. 
Whether war was declared or not made no difference. At 
one time the English exerted themselves successfully to bring 
about a peace between the Creeks and Cherokees. At its 
conclusion a Creek chief taunted the mediators as follows : 
"You have sweated yourselves poor in our smoky houses to 
make peace between us and the Cherokees, and thereby enable 
our young people to give you in a short time a far worse 
sweat than you have yet had." ^ The result justified his 
predictions ; the young men, having no other foe, at once took 

the arm, and McGillivray merely the head, and boasts of his numerous 
successful war enterprises. But the fact is, that during this whole time 
the Creeks performed no important stroke in war; the successful resist- 
ance to American encroachments was due to the diplomacy of the son of 
Sehoy. Moreover, Milfort's accounts of his own war deeds are mainly 
sheer romancing. He appears simply to have been one of a score of war- 
chiefs, and there were certainly a dozen other Creek chiefs, both half- 
breeds and natives, who were far more formidable to the frontier than 
he was ; all their names were dreaded by the settlers, but his was hardly 
known- * Adair, 279. 



THE APPALACHIAN CONFEDERACIES 55 

to ravaging the settlements. It soon became evident that 
it was hopeless to expect the Creeks to behave well to the 
whites merely because they were themselves well treated, and 
from time to time on the English fomented, instead of striving 
to put a stop to, their quarrels with the Choctaws and Chicka- 
saws. 

The record of our dealings with them must in many places 
be unpleasant reading to us, for it shows grave wrong-doing 
on our part ; yet the Creeks themselves lacked only the power, 
but not the will, to treat us worse than we treated them, and 
the darkest pages of their history recite the wrongs that we 
ourselves suffered at their hands. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ALGONQUINS OF THE NORTHWEST 

I 769-1 774 

BETWEEN the Ohio and the Great Lakes, directly north 
of the Appalachian confederacies, and separated from 
them by the unpeopled wilderness now forming the 
States of Tennessee and Kentucky, dwelt another set of In- 
dian tribes. They were ruder in life and manners than their 
Southern kinsmen, less advanced toward civilization, but also 
far more warlike ; they depended more on the chase and fishing, 
and much less on agriculture; they were savages, not merely 
barbarians ; and they were fewer in numbers and scattered over 
a wider expanse of territory. But they were farther advanced 
than the almost purely nomadic tribes of horse Indians whom 
we afterward encountered west of the Mississippi. Some of 
their villages were permanent, at any rate for a term of years, 
and near them they cultivated small crops of corn and melons. 
Their usual dwelling was the conical wigwam covered with 
bark, skins, or mats of plaited reeds, but in some of the 
villages of the tribes nearest the border, there were regular 
blockhouses, copied from their white neighbors. They went 
clad in skins or blankets; the men were hunters and warriors, 
who painted their bodies, and shaved from their crowns all 
the hair except the long scalp-lock, while the squaws were 
the drudges who did all the work. 

Their relations with the Iroquois, who lay east of them, 
were rarely very close, and, in fact, were generally hostile. 
They were also usually at odds with the Southern Indians, but 
among themselves they were frequently united in time of war 

56 



THE ALGONQUINS 57 

into a sort of lax league, and were collectively designated 
by the Americans as the northwestern Indians. All the tribes 
belonged to the great Algonquin family, with two exceptions, 
the Winnebagos and the Wyandots. The former, a branch of 
the Dakotahs, dwelt west of Lake Michigan; they came but 
little in contact with us, although many of their young men 
and warriors joined their neighbors in all the wars against 
us. The Wyandots, or Hurons, lived near Detroit and along 
the south shore of Lake Erie, and were in battle our most 
redoubtable foes. They were close kin to the Iroquois, though 
bitter enemies to them, and they shared the desperate valor of 
these, their hostile kinsfolk, holding themselves above the sur- 
rounding Algonquins, with whom, nevertheless, they lived in 
peace and friendship. 

The Algonquins were divided into many tribes, of ever-shift- 
ing size. It would be impossible to place them all, or indeed 
to enumerate them, with any degree of accuracy; for the tribes 
were continually splitting up, absorbing others, being absorbed 
in turn, or changing their abode, and, in addition, there were 
numerous small subtribes or bands of renegades, which some- 
times were, and sometimes were not, considered as portions 
of their larger neighbors. Often, also, separate bands, which 
would vaguely regard themselves as all one nation in one gen- 
eration, would in the next have lost even this sense of loose 
tribal unity. 

The chief tribes, however, were well known, and occupied 
tolerably definite locations. The Delawares, or Leni-Lenappe, 
dwelt farthest east, lying northwest of the upper Ohio, their 
lands adjoining those of the Senecas, the largest and western- 
most of the Six Nations. The Iroquois had been their most 
relentless foes and oppressors in time gone by; but on the 
eve of the Revolution all the border tribes were forgetting 
their past differences, and were drawing together to make 
a stand against the common foe. Thus it came about that par- 
ties of young Seneca braves fought with the Delawares in 
all their wars against us. 



58 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Westward of the Delawares lay the Shawnee villages, along 
the Scioto and on the Pickaway plains ; but it must be remem- 
bered that the Shawnees, Delawares, and Wyandots were 
closely united and their villages were often mixed in together. 
Still farther to the west, the Miamis or Twigtees lived between 
the Miami and the Wabash, together with other associated 
tribes, the Piankeshaws and the Weas or Ouatinous. Farther 
still, around the French villages, dwelt those scattered sur- 
vivors of the Illinois who had escaped the dire fate which 
befell their fellow tribesmen because they murdered Pontiac. 
Northward of this scanty people lived the Sacs and Foxes, and 
around the upper Great Lakes the numerous and powerful 
Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippewas; fierce and treacher- 
ous warriors, who did not till the soil, and were hunters and 
fishers only, more savage even than the tribes that lay south- 
east of them.^ In the works of the early travellers, we read 
the names of many other Indian nations; but whether these 
were indeed separate peoples, or branches of some of those 
already mentioned, or whether the different travellers spelled 
the Indian names in widely different ways, we cannot say. All 
that is certain is that there were many tribes and subtribes, 
who roamed and warred and hunted over the fair lands now 
forming the heart of our mighty nation, that to some of these 
tribes the whites gave names and to some they did not, and 
that the named and the nameless alike were swept down to the 
same inevitable doom. 

Moreover, there were bands of renegades or discontented In- 
dians, who for some cause had severed their tribal connections. 
Two of the most prominent of these bands were the Cherokees 
and Mingos, both being noted for their predatory and mur- 
derous nature, and their incessant raids on the frontier set- 
tlers. The Cherokees were fugitives from the rest of their 
nation, who had fled north, beyond the Ohio, and dwelt in 
the land shared by the Delawares and Shawnees, drawing to 

* See papers by Stephen D. Peet, on the northwestern tribes, read before 
the State Archaeological Society of Ohio, 1878. 



THE ALGONQUINS 59 

themselves many of the lawless young warriors, not only of 
these tribes, but of the others still farther off. The Mingos 
were likewise a mongrel banditti, made up of outlaws and 
wild spirits from among the Wyandots and Miamis, as well 
as from the Iroquois and the Munceys (a subtribe of the 
Delawares). 

All these northwestern nations had at one time been con- 
quered by the Iroquoi^, or at least they had been defeated, 
their lands overrun, and they themselves forced to acknowl- 
edge a vague overlordship on the part of their foes. But the 
power of the Iroquois was now passing away; when our na- 
tional history began, with the assembling of the first Con- 
tinental Congress, they had ceased to be a menace to the 
Western tribes, and the latter no longer feared or obeyed 
them, regarding them merely as allies or neutrals. Yet not 
only the Iroquois, but their kindred folk, notably the Wyan- 
dots, still claimed, and received, for the sake of their ancient 
superiority, marks of formal respect from the surrounding 
Algonquins. Thus, among the latter, the Leni-Lenappe pos- 
sessed the titular headship, and were called "grandfathers" at 
all the solemn councils, as well as in the ceremonious commu- 
nications that passed among the tribes; yet in turn they had 
to use similar titles of respect in addressing not only their 
former oppressors, but also their Huron allies, who had suf- 
fered under the same galling yoke.^ 

The northwestern nations had gradually come to equal the 
Iroquois as warriors; but among themselves the palm was 
still held by the Wyandots, who, although no more formidable 
than the others as regards skill, hardihood, and endurance, 
nevertheless stood alone in being willing to suffer heavy pun- 
ishment in order to win a victory.^ 

The Wyandots had been under the influence of the French 

* Barton, XXV. 

'Gen. W. H. Harrison, "Aborigines of the Ohio Valley." Old "Tippe- 
canoe" was the best possible authority for their courage. 



6o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Jesuits, and were nominally Christians ; ^ and though the at- 
tempt to civilize them had not been very successful, and they 
remained in most respects precisely like the Indians around 
them, there had been at least one point gained, for they were 
not, as a rule, nearly so cruel to their prisoners. Thus they 
surpassed their neighbors in mercifulness as well as valor. 
All the Algonquin tribes stood, in this respect, much on the 
same plane. The Delawares, whose fate it had been to be 
ever buffeted about by both the whites and the reds, had long 
cowered under the Iroquois terror, but they had at last shaken 
it off, had reasserted the superiority which tradition says they 
once before held, and had become a formidable and warlike 
race. Indeed, it is curious to study how the Delawares have 
changed in respect to their martial prowess since the days 
when the whites first came in contact with them. They were 
then not accounted a formidable people, and were not feared 
by any of their neighbors. By the time the Revolution broke 
out, they had become better warriors, and during the twenty 
years' Indian warfare that ensued were as formidable as most 
of the other redskins. But when moved west of the Missis- 
sippi, instead of their spirit being broken, they became more 
warlike than ever, and throughout the present century they 
have been the most renowned fighters of all the Indian peo- 
ples, and, moreover, they have been celebrated for their roving, 
adventurous nature. Their numbers have steadily 'dwindled, 
owing to their incessant wars and to the dangerous nature of 
their long roamings.^ 

It is impossible to make any but the roughest guess at the 
numbers of these northwestern Indians. It seems probable 

^ "Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Colonel James 
Smith, etc.," written by himself, Lexington, Ky., 1799. Smith is our best 
contemporary authority on Indian warfare ; he lived with them for sev- 
eral years, and fought them in many campaigns. Besides several editions 
of the above, he also published, in 1812, at Paris, Ky., a "Treatise" on 
Indian warfare, which holds much the same matter. 

^ See Parkman's "Oregon Trail." In 1884 I myself met two Delawares 
hunting alone, just north of the Black Hills. They were returning from a 
trip to the Rocky Mountains. I could not but admire their strong, manly 
forms, and the disdainful resolution with which they had hunted and 



THE ALGONQUINS 6i 

that there were considerably over fifty thousand of them in 
all; but no definite assertion can be made even as to the dif- 
ferent tribes. As with the Southern Indians, old-time writers 
certainly greatly exaggerated their numbers, and their modern 
followers show a tendency to fall into the opposite fault, the 
truth being that any number of isolated observations to sup- 
port either position can be culled from the works of the con- 
temporary travellers and statisticians.^ No two independent 
observers give the same figures. One main reason for this 
is doubtless the exceedingly loose way in which the word 
"tribe" was used. If a man speaks of the Miamis and the 
Delawares, for instance, before we can understand him we 
must know whether he includes therein the Weas and the 
Munceys, for he may or may not. By quoting the numbers 
attributed by the old writers to tlije various subtribes, and 
then comparing them with the numbers given later on by 
writers using the same names, but speaking of entire con- 
federacies, it is easy to work out an apparent increase, while 
a reversal of the process shows an appalling decrease. More- 
over, as the bands broke up, wandered apart, and then re- 
joined each other or not, as events fell out, two successive 
observers might make widely difi^erent estimates. Many tribes 
that have disappeared were undoubtedly actually destroyed; 
many more have simply changed their names, or have been 
absorbed by other tribes. Similarly, those that have apparently 
held their own have done so at the expense of their neighbors. 
This was made all the easier by the fact that the Algonquins 
were so closely related in customs and language; indeed, there 
was constant intermarriage between the different tribes. On 
the whole, however, there is no question that, in striking con- 
travelled for so many hundred miles, in defiance of the white frontiersmen 
and of the wild native tribes as well. I think they were in more danger 
from the latter than the former ; but they seemed perfectly confident of 
their ability to hold their own against both. 

^See Barton, the Madison MSS., Schoolcraft, Thos. Hutchins (who 
accompanied Bouquet), Smythe, Pike, various reports of the U. S. Indian 
Commissioners, etc. 



62 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

trast to the southern or Appalachian Indians, these northwest- 
ern tribes have suffered a terrible diminution in numbers. 

With many of them we did not come into direct contact 
for long years after our birth as a nation. Perhaps those 
tribes with all or part of whose warriors we were brought 
into collision at some time during or immediately succeeding 
the Revolutionary War may have amounted to thirty thousand 
souls. ^ But though they acknowledged kinship with one an- 
other, and though they all alike hated the Americans; and 
though, moreover, all at times met in the great councils, to 
smoke the calumet of peace, and brighten the chain of friend- 
ship - among themselves, and to take up the tomahawk ^ 
against the white foes, yet the tie that bound them together 
was so loose, and they were so fickle and so split up by jarring 
interests and small jealousies, that never more than half of 
them went to war at the same time. Very frequently even 
the members of a tribe would fail to act together. 

Thus it came about that during the forty years intervening 
between Braddock's defeat and Wayne's victory, though these 
northwestern tribes waged incessant, unending, relentless war- 
fare against our borders, yet they never at any one time had 
more than three thousand warriors in the field, and frequently 
not half that number; ^ and in all the battles they fought with 

^I base this number on a careful examination of the tribes named above, 
discarding such of the Northern bands of the Chippewas, for instance, as 
were unlikely at that time to have been drawn into war with us. 

' The expressions generally used by them in sending their war talks and 
peace talks to one another or the whites. Hundreds of copies of these 
"talks" are preserved at Washington. 

* Smith, "Remarkable Occurrences," etc., p. 154. Smith gives a very 
impartial account of the Indian discipline and of their effectiveness, and is 
one of the few men who warred against them who did not greatly over- 
estimate their numbers and losses. He was a successful Indian fighter 
himself. For the British regulars he had a true backwoods contempt, 
although having more than the average backwoods sense in acknowledging 
their effectiveness in the open. He had lived so long among the Indians, 
and estimated so highly their personal prowess, that his opinion must be 
accepted with caution where dealing with matters of discipline and com- 
mand. 



THE ALGONQUINS 63 

British and American troops, there was not one in which they 
were eleven hundred strong.^ 

But they were superb individual fighters, beautifully drilled 
in their own discipline ; " and they were favored beyond meas- 
ure by the nature of their ground, of which their whole 
system of warfare enabled them to take the utmost possible 
benefit. Much has been written and sung of the advantages 
possessed by the mountaineer when striving in his own home 
against invaders from the plains; but these advantages are as 
nothing when weighed with those which make the warlike 
dweller in forests unconquerable by men who have not his 
training, A hardy soldier, accustomed only to war in the 
open, will become a good cragsman in fewer weeks than it 
will take him years to learn to be so much as a fair woodsman ; 
for it is beyond all comparison more difficult to attain pro- 
ficiency in woodcraft than in mountaineering.^ 

The Wyandots, and the Algonquins who surrounded them, 
dwelt in a region of sunless, tangled forests ; and all the wars 
we waged for the possession of the country between the Alle- 
ghanies and the Mississippi were carried on in the never-ending 
stretches of gloomy woodland. It was not an open forest. 
The underbrush grew, dense and rank, between the boles of 
the tall trees, making a cover so thick that it was in many 

^ The accounts of the Indian numbers in any battle given by British or 
Americans, soldiers or civilians, are ludicrously exaggerated as a rule ; 
even now it seems a common belief of historians that the whites were 
generally outnumbered in battles, while in reality they were generally 
much more numerous than their foes. 

* Harrison (loc. cit.) calls them "the finest light troops in the world"; 
and he had had full experience in serving with American and against 
British Infantry. 

^ Any one who is fond of the chase can test the truth of this proposition 
for himself, by trying how long it will take him to learn to kill a bighorn 
on the mountains, and how long it will take him to learn to kill whitetail 
deer in a dense forest, by fair still-hunting, the game being equally plenty. 
I have known many novices learn to equal the best old hunters, red or 
white, in killing mountain game ; I have never met one who could begin 
to do as well as an Indian in the dense forest, unless brought up to it — 
and rarely even then. Yet, though woodcraft is harder to learn, it does 
not imply the possession of such valuable qualities as mountaineering; 
and when cragsman and woodman meet on neutral ground, the former is 
apt to be the better man. 



64 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

places impenetrable, so thick that it nowhere gave a chance 
for human eye to see even as far as a bow could carry. No 
horse could penetrate it save by following the game trails or 
paths chopped with the axe; and a stranger venturing a hun- 
dred yards from a beaten road would be so helplessly lost 
that he could not, except by the merest chance, even find his 
way back to the spot he had just left. Here and there it was 
broken by a rare hillside glade or by a meadow in a stream 
valley; but elsewhere a man might travel for weeks as if in a 
perpetual twilight, never once able to see the sun through the 
interlacing twigs that formed a dark canopy above his head. 

This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they 
had lived from childhood, and where they were as much at 
ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained 
for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the 
wilderness was an open book; nothing at rest or in motion 
escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they 
could walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint 
indentation of the soil, which the eye of no white man could 
see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted 
in their ears.^ With moccasined feet they trod among brittle 
twigs, dried leaves, and dead branches as silently as the cougar, 
and they equalled the great wood-cat in stealth and far sur- 
passed it in cunning and ferocity. They could no more get 
lost in the trackless wilderness than a civilized man could get 
lost on a highway. Moreover, no knight of the Middle Ages 
was so surely protected by his armor as they were by their 
skill in hiding; the whole forest was to the whites one vast 
ambush, and to them a sure and ever-present shield. Every tree 
trunk was a breastwork ready prepared for battle ; every bush, 
every moss-covered boulder, was a defense against assault, 

*To this day the wild — not the half-tame — Indians remain unequalled as 
trackers. Even among the old hunters not one white in a hundred can 
come near them. In my experience I have known a very few whites who 
had spent all their lives in the wilderness who equalled the Indian average ; 
but I never met any white who came up to the very best Indian. But, 
because of their better shooting and their better nerve, the whites crften 
make the better hunters. 



THE ALGONQUINS 65 

from behind which, themselves unseen, they watched with 
fierce derision the movements of their clumsy white enemy. 
Lurking, skulking, travelling with noiseless rapidity, they left 
a trail that only a master in woodcraft could follow, while, on 
the other hand, they could dog a white man's footsteps as a 
hound runs a fox. Their silence, their cunning and stealth, 
their terrible prowess and merciless cruelty, make it no figure 
of speech to call them the tigers of the human race. 

Unlike the Southern Indians, the villages of the northwest- 
ern tribes were usually far from the frontier. Tireless, and 
careless of all hardship, they came silently out of unknown 
forests, robbed and murdered, and then disappeared again into 
the fathomless depths of the woods. Half of the terror they 
caused was due to the extreme difficulty of following them, and 
the absolute impossibility of forecasting their attacks. With- 
out warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the 
death-stroke, they emerged from the forest fastnesses, the 
horror they caused being heightened no less by the mystery 
that shrouded them than by the dreadful nature of their rav- 
ages. Wrapped in the mantle of the unknown, appalling by 
their craft, their ferocity, their fiendish cruelty, they seemed 
to the white settlers devils and not men ; no one could say 
with certainty whence they came nor of what tribe they were ; 
and when they had finished their dreadful work they retired 
into a wilderness that closed over their trail as the waves of 
the ocean close in the wake of a ship. 

They were trained to the use of arms from their youth up, 
and war and hunting were their two chief occupations, the 
business as well as the pleasure of their lives. They were 
not as skilful as the white hunters with the rifle ^ — though more 
so than the average regular soldier — nor could they equal the 

^ It is curious how to this day the wild Indians retain the same traits. 
I have seen and taken part in many matches between frontiersmen and 
the Sioux, Cheyennes, Grosventres. and Mandans, and the Indians were 
beaten in almost every one. On the other hand, the Indians will stand 
fatigue, hunger, and privation better, but they seem more susceptible to 
cold. 



66 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

frontiersman in feats of physical prowess, such as boxing 
and wrestHng; but their superior endurance and the ease with 
which they stood fatigue and exposure made amends for this. 
A white might outrun them for eight or ten miles ; but on a 
long journey they could tire out any man, and any beast except 
a wolf. Like most barbarians, they were fickle and incon- 
stant, not to be relied on for pushing through a long campaign, 
and after a great victory apt to go off to their homes, because 
each man desired to secure his own plunder and tell his own 
tale of glory. They are often spoken of as undisciplined; 
but in reality their discipline in the battle itself was very high. 
They attacked, retreated, rallied, or repelled a charge at the 
signal of command ; and they were able to fight in open order 
in thick covers without losing touch of each other — a feat 
that no European regiment was then able to perform. 

On their own ground they were far more formidable than 
the best European troops. The British Grenadiers through- 
out the eighteenth century showed themselves superior, in 
the actual shock of battle, to any infantry of Continental 
Europe; if they ever met an overmatch, it was when pitted 
against the Scotch Highlanders. Yet both grenadier and 
highlander, the heroes of Minden, the heirs to the glory of 
Marlborough's campaigns, as well as the sinewy soldiers who 
shared in the charges of Prestonpans and Culloden, proved 
helpless when led against the dark tribesmen of the forest. 
On the march they could not be trusted thirty yards from 
the column without getting lost in the woods ^ — the moun- 
tain training of the highlanders apparently standing them in 
no stead whatever — and were only able to get around at all 
when convoyed by backwoodsmen. In fight, they fared even 
worse. The British regulars at Braddock's battle, and the 
highlanders at Grant's defeat a few years later, suffered the 
same fate. Both battles were fair fights ; neither was a sur- 
prise; yet the stubborn valor of the red-coated grenadier and 
the headlong courage of the kilted Scot proved of less than 

* See Parkman's "Conspiracy of Pontiac" ; also "Montcalm and Wolfe." 



THE ALGONQUINS 67 

no avail. Not only were they utterly routed and destroyed in 
each case by an inferior force of Indians (the French taking 
little part in the conflict), but they were able to make no effec- 
tive resistance whatever; it is to this day doubtful whether 
these superb regulars were able, in the battles where they were 
destroyed, to so much as kill one Indian for every hundred 
of their own men who fell. The provincials who were with 
the regulars were the only troops who caused any loss to the 
foe; and this was true in but a less degree of Bouquet's fight 
at Bushy Run. Here Bouquet, by a clever stratagem, gained 
the victory over an enemy inferior in numbers to himself ; 
but only after a two days' struggle, in which he suffered a 
fourfold greater loss than he inflicted.^ 

When hemmed in so that they had no hope of escape, the 
Indians fought to the death; but when a way of retreat was 
open they would not stand cutting like British, French, or 
American regulars, and so, though with a nearly equal force, 
would retire if they were suffering heavily, even if they were 
causing their foes to suffer still more. This was not due to 
lack of courage; it was their system, for they were few in 
numbers, and they did not believe in losing their men." The 
Wyandots were exceptions to this rule, for with them it was 
a point of honor not to yield, and so they were of all the tribes 
the most dangerous in an actual pitched battle.^ 

But making the attack, as they usually did, with the expec- 

^ Bouquet, like so many of his predecessors, and successors, greatly 
exaggerated the numbers and loss of the Indians in this fight. Smith, who 
derived his information both from the Indians and from the American 
rangers, states that but eighteen Indians were killed at Bushy Run. 

^ Most of the plains Indians feel in the same way at present. I was 
once hunting with a Sioux half-breed who illustrated the Indian view of 
the matter in a rather striking way, saying: "If there were a dozen of 
you white hunters and you found six or eight bears in the brush, and 
you knew you could go in and kill them all, but that in the fight you 
would certainly lose three or four men yourselves, you wouldn't go in, 
would you? You'd wait until you got a better chance, and could kill 
them without so much risk. Well, Indians feel the same way about 
attacking whites that you would feel about attacking those bears." 

' All the authorities, from Smith to Harrison, are unanimous on this 
point. 



68 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tation of success, all were equally dangerous. If their foes 
were clustered together in a huddle they attacked them without 
hesitation, no matter what the difference in numbers, and shot 
them down as if they had been elk or buffalo, they themselves 
being almost absolutely safe from harm, as they flitted from 
cover to cover. It was this capacity for hiding, or taking ad- 
vantage of cover, that gave them their great superiority; and 
it is because of this that the wood tribes were so much more 
formidable foes in actual battle than the horse Indians of 
the plains afterward proved themselves. In dense woodland 
a body of regular soldiers are almost as useless against In- 
dians as they would be if at night they had to fight foes who 
could see in the dark; it needs special and long-continued 
training to fit them in any degree for wood-fighting against 
such foes. Out on the plains the white hunter's skill with 
the riflle and his cool resolution give him an immense advan- 
tage ; a few determined men can withstand a host of Indians 
in the open, although helpless if they meet them in thick 
cover; and our defeats by the Sioux and other plains tribes 
have generally taken the form of a small force being over- 
whelmed by a large one. 

Not only were the Indians very terrible in battle, but they 
were cruel beyond all belief in victory; and the gloomy an- 
nals of border warfare are stained with their darkest hues 
because it was a war in which helpless women and children 
suffered the same hideous fate that so often befell their hus- 
bands and fathers. It was a war waged by savages against 
armed settlers, whose families followed them into the wilder- 
ness. Such a war is inevitably bloody and cruel ; but the in- 
human love of cruelty for cruelty's sake,^ which marks the 
red Indian above all other savages, rendered these wars more 

*Any one who has ever been in an encampment of wild Indians, and 
has had the misfortune to witness the delight the children take in tor- 
turing little animals, will admit that the Indian's love of cruelty for 
cruelty's sake cannot possibly be exaggerated. The young are so trained 
that when old they shall find their keenest pleasure in inflicting pain in 
its most appalling form. Among the most brutal white borderers a man 
would be instantly lynched if he practised on any creature the fiendish 



THE ALGONQUINS 69 

terrible than any others. For the hideous, unnamable, unthink- 
able tortures practised by the red men on their captured foes, 
and on their foes' tender women and helpless children, were 
such as we read of in no other struggle, hardly even in the 
revolting pages that tell the deeds of the Holy Inquisition. It 
was inevitable — indeed it was in many instances proper — that 
such deeds should awake in the breasts of the whites the grim- 
mest, wildest spirit of revenge and hatred. 

The history of the border wars, both in the ways they were 
begun and in the ways they were waged, makes a long tale of 
injuries inflicted, suffered, and mercilessly revenged. It could 
not be otherwise when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, de- 
spising all men not of their own color, were thrown in contact 
with savages who esteemed cruelty and treachery as the high- 
est of virtues, and rapine and murder as the worthiest of 
pursuits. Moreover, it was sadly inevitable that the law- 
abiding borderer as well as the white ruffian, the peaceful In- 
dian as well as the painted marauder, should be plunged into 
the struggle to suffer the punishment that should only have 
fallen on their evil-minded fellows. 

Looking back, it is easy to say that much of the wrong- 
doing could have been prevented; but if we examine the facts 
to find out the truth, not to establish a theory, we are bound 
to admit that the struggle was really one that could not pos- 
sibly have been avoided. The sentimental historians speak as 
if the blame had been all ours, and the wrong all done to our 
foes, and as if it would have been possible by any exercise 
of wisdom to reconcile claims that were in their very essence 
conflicting; but their utterances are as shallow as they are 
untruthful.^ Unless we were willing that the whole continent 
west of the Alleghanies should remain an unpeopled waste, the 
hunting-ground of savages, war was inevitable; and even had 
we been willing, and had we refrained from encroaching on 
the Indians' lands, the war would have come nevertheless, for 

torture which in an Indian camp either attracts no notice at all, or else 
excites merely laughter. ^ See Note p. 79. 



70 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

then the Indians themselves would have encroached on ours. 
Undoubtedly we have wronged many tribes ; but equally un- 
doubtedly our first definite knowledge of many others has been 
derived from their unprovoked outrages upon our people. The 
Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatomies furnished hundreds 
of young warriors to the parties that devastated our frontiers 
generations before we in any way encroached upon or wronged 
them. 

Mere outrages could be atoned for or settled; the question 
which lay at the root of our difficulties was that of the occu- 
pation of the land itself, and to this there could be no solution 
save war. The Indians had no ownership of the land in the 
way in which we understand the term. The tribes lived far 
apart; each had for its hunting-ground all the territory from 
which it was not barred by rivals. Each looked with jealousy 
upon all interlopers, but each was prompt to act as an interloper 
when occasion offered. Every good hunting-ground was 
claimed by many nations. It was rare, indeed, that any tribe 
had an uncontested title to a large tract of land; where such 
title existed, it rested not on actual occupancy and cultivation, 
but on the recent butchery of weaker rivals. For instance, 
there were a dozen tribes, all of whom hunted in Kentucky, 
and fought each other there, all of whom had equally good 
titles to the soil, and not one of whom acknowledged the 
right of any other; as a matter of fact, they had therein no 
right, save the right of the strongest. The land no more be- 
longed to them than it belonged to Boone and the white hunters 
who first visited it. 

On the borders there are perpetual complaints of the en- 
croachments of whites upon Indian lands ; and naturally the 
central government at Washington, and before it was at Wash- 
ington, has usually been inclined to sympathize with the feeling 
that considers the whites the aggressors, for the government 
does not wish a war, does not itself feel any land hunger, 
hears of not a tenth of the Indian outrages, and knows by 
experience that the white borderers are not easy to rule. As 



THE ALGONQUINS 71 

a consequence, the official reports of the people who are not 
on the ground are apt to paint the Indian side in its most favor- 
able light, and are often completely untrustworthy, this being 
particularly the case if the author of the report is an Eastern 
man, utterly unacquainted with the actual condition of affairs 
on the frontier. 

Such a man, though both honest and intelligent, when he 
hears that the whites have settled on Indian lands, cannot 
realize that the act has no resemblance whatever to the for- 
cible occupation of land already cultivated. The white settler 
has merely moved into an uninhabited waste ; he does not feel 
that he is committing a wrong, for he knows perfectly well 
that the land is really owned by no one. It is never even visited, 
except perhaps for a week or two every year, and then the 
visitors are likely at any moment to be driven off by a rival 
hunting-party of greater strength. The settler ousts no one 
from the land; if he did not chop down the trees, hew out 
the logs for a building, and clear the ground for tillage, no 
one else would do so. He drives out the game, however, and 
of course the Indians who live thereon sink their mutual ani- 
mosities and turn against the intruder. The truth is, the In- 
dians never had any real title to the soil; they had not half 
as good a claim to it, for instance, as the cattlemen now have 
to all eastern Montana, yet no one would assert that the cattle- 
men have a right to keep immigrants off their vast un fenced 
ranges. The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice 
on their side ; this great continent could not have been kept as 
nothing but a game-preserve for squalid savages. Moreover, 
to the most oppressed Indian nations the whites often acted as 
a protection, or, at least, they deferred instead of hastening 
their fate. But for the interposition of the whites it is proba- 
ble that the Iroquois would have exterminated every Algonquin 
tribe before the end of the eighteenth century; exactly as in 
recent time the Crows and Pawnees would have been destroyed 
by the Sioux, had it not been for the wars we have waged 
against the latter. 



^2. THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Again, the loose governmental system of the Indians made 
it as difficult to secure a permanent peace with them as it was 
to negotiate the purchase of the lands. The sachem, or heredi- 
tary peace chief, and the elective war-chief, who wielded only 
the influence that he could secure by his personal prowess and 
his tact, were equally unable to control all of their tribesmen, 
and were powerless with their confederated nations. If peace 
was made with the Shawnees, the war was continued by the 
Miamis; if peace was made with the latter, nevertheless per- 
haps one small band was dissatisfied, and continued the contest 
on its own account; and even if all the recognized bands were 
dealt with, the parties of renegades or outlaws had to be con- 
sidered; and in the last resort the full recognition accorded 
by the Indians to the right of private warfare made it possible 
for any individual warrior who possessed any influence to go 
on raiding and murdering unchecked. Every tribe, every sub- 
tribe, every band of a dozen souls ruled over by a petty 
chief, almost every individual warrior of the least importance, 
had to be met and pacified. Even if peace were declared, the 
Indians could not exist long without breaking it. There was 
to them no temptation to trespass on the white man's ground 
for the purpose of settling; but every young brave was brought 
up to regard scalps taken and horses stolen, in war or peace, 
as the highest proofs and tokens of skill and courage, the 
sure means of attaining glory and honor, the admiration of 
men and the love of women. Where the young men thought 
thus, and the chiefs had so little real control, it was inevitable 
that there should be many unprovoked forays for scalps, slaves, 
and horses made upon the white borderers.^ 

As for the whites themselves, they too have many and griev- 
ous sins against their red neighbors for which to answer. 
They cannot be severely blamed for trespassing upon what 
was called the Indian's land; for, let sentimentalists say what 

* Similarly, the Crows, who have always been treated well by us, have 
murdered and robbed any number of peaceful, unprotected travellers dur- 
ing the past three decades, as I know personally. 



THE ALGONQUINS ^^ 

they will, the man who puts the soil to use must of right dis- 
possess the man who does not, or the world will come to a 
standstill ; but for many of their other deeds there can be no 
pardon. On the border each man was a law unto himself, 
and good and bad alike were left in perfect freedom to follow 
out to the uttermost limits their own desires; for the spirit 
of individualism so characteristic of American life reached its 
extreme of development in the backwoods. The whites who 
wished peace, the magistrates and leaders, had little more power 
over their evil and unruly fellows than the Indian sachems had 
over the turbulent young braves. Each man did what seemed 
best in his own eyes, almost without let or hindrance ; unless, 
indeed, he trespassed upon the rights of his neighbors, who 
were ready enough to band together in their own defense, 
though slow to interfere in the affairs of others. 

Thus the men of lawless, brutal spirit who are found in 
every community, and who flock to places where the reign of 
order is lax, were able to follow the bent of their inclinations 
unchecked. They utterly despised the red man; they held it 
no crime whatever to cheat him in trading, to rob him of his 
peltries or horses, to murder him if the fit seized them. Crim- 
inals who generally preyed on their own neighbors found it 
easier, and perhaps hardly as dangerous, to pursue their calling 
at the expense of the redskins, for the latter, when they dis- 
covered that they had been wronged, were quite as apt to vent 
their wrath on some outsider as on the original offender. 
If they injured a white, all the whites might make common 
cause against them; but if they injured a red man, though 
there were sure to be plenty of whites who disapproved of 
it, there were apt to be very few indeed whose disapproval 
took any active shape. 

Each race stood by its own members, and each held all of 
the other race responsible for the misdeeds of a few uncon- 
trollable spirits ; and this clannishness among those of one color, 
and the refusal or the inability to discriminate between the 
good and the bad of the other color, were the two most fruitful 



74 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

causes of border strife.^ When, even if he sought to prevent 
them, the innocent man was sure to suffer for the misdeeds 
of the guilty, unless both joined together for defense, the 
former had no alternative save to make common cause with 
the latter. Moreover, in a sparse backwoods settlement, where 
the presence of a strong, vigorous fighter was a source of 
safety to the whole community, it was impossible to expect 
that he would be punished with severity for offenses which, in 
their hearts, his fellow townsmen could not help regarding 
as in some sort a revenge for the injuries they had themselves 
suffered. Every quiet, peaceable settler had either himself been 
grievously wronged, or had been an eye-witness to wrongs done 
to his friends; and while these were vivid in his mind, the 
corresponding wrongs done the Indians were never brought 
home to him at all. If his son was scalped or his cattle driven 
off, he could not be expected to remember that perhaps the 
Indians who did the deed had themselves been cheated by 
a white trader, or had lost a relative at the hands of some 
border ruffian, or felt aggrieved because a hundred miles off 
some settler had built a cabin on lands they considered their 
own. When he joined with other exasperated and injured men 
to make a retaliatory inroad, his vengeance might or might 
not fall on the heads of the real offenders ; and, in any case, he 
was often not in the frame of mind to put a stop to the out- 
rages sure to be committed by the brutal spirits among his 
allies — though these brutal spirits were probably in a small 
minority. 

* It is precisely the same at the present day. I have known a party of 
Sioux to steal the horses of a buffalo-hunting outfit, whereupon the latter 
retaliated by stealing the horses of a party of harmless Grosventres : and 
I knew a party of Cheyennes, whose horses had been taken by white 
thieves, to, in revenge, assail a camp of perfectly orderly cowboys. Most 
of the ranchmen along the Little Missouri in 1884 were pretty good fel- 
lows, who would not wrong Indians, yet they tolerated for a long time 
the presence of men who did not scruple to boast that they stole horses 
from the latter; while our peaceful neighbors, the Grosventres, likewise 
permitted two notorious red-skinned horse thieves to use their reservation 
as a harbor of refuge, and a starting-point from which to make forays 
against the cattlemen. 



THE ALGONQUINS 75 

The excesses so often committed by the whites, when, after 
many checks and failures, they at last grasped victory, are 
causes for shame and regret; yet it is only fair to keep in 
mind the terrible provocations they had endured. Mercy, 
pity, magnanimity to the fallen, could not be expected from 
the frontiersmen gathered together to war against an Indian 
tribe. Almost every man of such a band had bitter personal 
wrongs to avenge. He was not taking part in a war against 
a civilized foe; he was fighting in a contest where women and 
children suffered the fate of the strong men, and instead of 
enthusiasm for his country's flag and a general national ani- 
mosity toward its enemies, he was actuated by a furious flame 
of hot anger, and was goaded on by memories of which merely 
to think was madness. His friends had been treacherously 
slain while on messages of peace; his house had been burned, 
his cattle driven off, and all he had in the world destroyed 
before he knew that war existed and when he felt quite guilt- 
less of all offense; his sweetheart or wife had been carried 
off, ravished, and was at the moment the slave and concubine 
of some dirty and brutal Indian warrior; his son, the stay of 
his house, had been burned at the stake with torments too hor- 
rible to mention ; ^ his sister, when ransomed and returned to 
him, had told of the weary journey through the woods, when 
she carried around her neck as a horrible necklace the bloody 
scalps of her husband and children ; ^ seared into his eyeballs, 
into his very brain, he bore ever with him, waking or sleeping, 
the sight of the skinned, mutilated, hideous body of the baby 

^The expression "too horrible to mention" is to be taken literally, not 
figuratively. It applies equally to the fate that has befallen every white 
man or woman who has fallen into the power of hostile plains Indians 
during the last ten or fifteen years. The nature of the wild Indian has 
not changed. Not one man in a hundred, and not a single woman, escapes 
torments which a civilized man cannot look another in the face and so 
much as speak of. Impalement on charred sticks, finger-nails split oflf 
backward, finger-joints chewed ofT, eyes burnt out — these tortures can be 
mentioned, but there are others equally normal and customary which can- 
not even be hinted at, especially when women are the victims. 

" For the particular incident, see M'Ferrin's "History of Methodism in 
Tennessee," p. 145. 



y6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

who had just grown old enough to recognize him and to crow 
and laugh when taken in his arms. Such incidents as these 
were not exceptional; one or more, and often all of them, 
were the invariable attendants of every one of the countless 
Indian inroads that took place during the long generations of 
forest warfare. It was small wonder that men who had thus 
lost everything should sometimes be fairly crazed by their 
wrongs. Again and again on the frontier we hear of some 
such unfortunate who has devoted all the remainder of his 
wretched life to the one object of taking vengeance on the 
whole race of the men who had darkened his days forever. 
Too often the squaws and pappooses fell victims of the ven- 
geance that should have come only on the warriors; for the 
whites regarded their foes as beasts rather than men, and knew 
that the squaws were more cruel than others in torturing the 
prisoner, and that the very children took their full part therein, 
being held up by their fathers to tomahawk the dying victims 
at the stake. ^ 

Thus it is that there are so many dark and bloody pages 
in the book of border warfare, that grim and iron-bound vol- 
ume, wherein we read how our forefathers won the wide lands 
that we inherit. It contains many a tale of fierce heroism 
and adventurous ambition, of the daring and resolute courage 
of men and the patient endurance of women; it shows us a 
stern race of freemen who toiled hard, endured greatly, and 
fronted adversity bravely, who prized strength and courage 
and good faith, whose wives were chaste, who were generous 
and loyal to their friends. But it shows us also how they 
spurned at restraint, and fretted under it, how they would brook 

^As was done to the father of Simon Girty. Any history of any Indian 
inroad will give examples such as I have mentioned above. See McAfee 
MSS., John P. Hale's "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," De Haas's "Indian 
Wars," Wither's "Border War," etc. In one respect, however, the Indians 
east of the Mississippi were better than the tribes of the plains from whom 
our borders have suffered during the present century ; their female cap- 
tives were not invariably ravished by every member of the band capturing 
them, as has ever been the custom among the horse Indians, Still, they 
were often made the concubines of their captors. 



THE ALGONQUINS "j^ 

no wrong to themselves, and yet too often inflicted wrongs on 
others ; their feats of terrible prowess are interspersed with 
deeds of the foulest and most wanton aggression, the darkest 
treachery, the most revolting cruelty; and though we meet 
with plenty of the rough, strong, coarse virtues, we see but 
little of such qualities as mercy for the fallen, the weak, and 
the helpless, or pity for a gallant and vanquished foe. 

Among the Indians of the Northwest, generally so much 
alike that we need pay little heed to tribal distinctions, there 
was one body deserving especial and separate mention. Among 
the turbulent and jarring elements tossed into wild confusion 
by the shock of the contact between savages and the rude 
vanguard of civilization, surrounded and threatened by the 
painted warriors of the woods no less than by the lawless white 
riflemen who lived on the stump-dotted clearings, there dwelt 
a group of peaceful beings who were destined to suffer a dire 
fate in the most lamentable and pitiable of all the tragedies 
which were played out in the heart of this great wilderness. 
These were the Moravian Indians.^ They were mostly Dela- 
wares, and had been converted by the indefatigable German 
missionaries, who taught the tranquil, Quaker-like creed of 
Count Zinzendorf. The zeal and success of the missionaries 
were attested by the marvelous change they had wrought in 
these converts; for they had transformed them in one genera- 
tion from a restless, idle, bloodthirsty people of hunters and 
fishers, into an orderly, thrifty, industrious folk, believing with 
all their hearts the Christian religion in the form in which 
their teachers both preached and practised it. At first the mis- 
sionaries, surrounded by their Indian converts, dwelt in Penn- 
sylvania ; but, harried and oppressed by their white neighbors, 
the submissive and patient Moravians left their homes and 
their cherished belongings, and in 1771 moved out into the 
wilderness northwest of the Ohio. It is a bitter and unan- 

*The missionaries called themselves United Brethren; to outsiders they 
were known as Moravians. Loskiel, "History of the 'Mission of the 
United Brethren," London, 1794. Heckewelder, "Narrative of the 'Mission 
of the United Brethren," Philadelphia, 1820. 



78 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

swerable commentary on the workings of a non-resistant creed, 
when reduced to practice, that such outrages and massacres as 
those committed on these helpless Indians were more numer- 
ous and flagrant in the colony the Quakers governed than in 
any other ; their vaunted policy of peace, which forbade them 
to play a true man's part and put down wrong-doing, caused 
the utmost possible evil to fall both on the white man and 
the red. An avowed policy of force and fraud, carried out 
in the most cynical manner, could hardly have worked more 
terrible injustice ; their system was a direct incentive to crime 
and wrongdoing between the races, for they punished the ag- 
gressions of neither, and hence allowed any blow to always 
fall heaviest on those least deserving to suffer. No other 
colony made such futile, contemptible efforts to deal with 
the Indian problem ; no other colony showed such supine, selfish 
helplessness in allowing her own border citizens to be merci- 
lessly harried ; none other betrayed such inability to master 
the hostile Indians, while, nevertheless, utterly failing to pro- 
tect those who were peaceful and friendly. 

When the Moravians removed beyond the Ohio, they set- 
tled on the banks of the Muskingum, made clearings in the 
forest, and built themselves little towns, which they christened 
by such quaint names as Salem and Gnadenhiitten ; names that 
were pathetic symbols of the peace which the harmless and 
sadly submissive wanderers so vainly sought. Here, in the 
forest, they worked and toiled, surrounded their clean, neatly 
kept villages with orchards and grain-fields, bred horses and 
cattle, and tried to do wrong to no man; all of each com- 
munity meeting every day to worship and praise their Creator. 
But the missionaries who had done so much for them had 
also done one thing which more than offset it all ; for they 
had taught them not to defend themselves, and had thus ex- 
posed the poor beings who trusted their teaching to certain 
destruction. No greater wrong can ever be done than to put 
a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to 
defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of 



THE ALGONQUINS 79 

evil be made surer and quicker; but the wrong was peculiarly 
great when, at such a time and in such a place, the defenseless 
Indians were thrust between the anvil of their savage red 
brethren and the hammer of the lawless and brutal white bor- 
derer. The awful harvest which the poor converts reaped 
had in reality been sown for them by their own friends and 
would-be benefactors. 

So the Moravians, seeking to deal honestly with Indians 
and whites alike, but in return suspected and despised by 
both, worked patiently year in and year out, as they dwelt in 
their lonely homes, meekly awaiting the stroke of the terrible 
doom which hung over them. 

NOTE 

It is greatly to be wished that some competent person would write 
a full and true history of our national dealings with the Indians. 
Undoubtedly the latter have often suffered terrible injustice at our 
hands. A number of instances, such as the conduct of the Georgians 
to the Cherokees in the early part of the present century, or the whole 
treatment of Chief Joseph and his Nez Perces, might be mentioned, 
which are indelible blots on our fair fame; and yet, in describing our 
dealings with the red men as a whole, historians do us much less than 
justice. 

It was wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, 
unless we were willing to see the American continent fall into the 
hands of some other strong power; and even had we adopted such a 
ludicrous policy, the Indians themselves would have made war upon 
us. It cannot be too often insisted that they did not own the land; 
or, at least, that their ownership was merely such as that claimed 
often by our own white hunters. If the Indians really owned Ken- 
tucky in 1775, then in 1776 it was the property of Boone and his asso- 
ciates ; and to dispossess one party was as great a wrong as to dis- 
possess the other. To recognize the Indian ownership of the limitless 
prairies and forests of this continent — that is, to consider the dozen 
squalid savages who hunted at long intervals over a territory of a 
thousand square miles as owning it outright — necessarily implies a 
similar recognition of the claims of every white hunter, squatter, horse 
thief, or wandering cattleman. Take as an example the country round 
the Little Missouri. When the cattlemen, the first actual settlers, 
came into this land in 1882, it was already scantily peopled by a few 
white hunters and trappers. The latter were extremely jealous of 
intrusion ; they had held their own in spite of the Indians, and, like 
the Indians, the inrush of settlers and the consequent destruction of the 



I 



8o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

game meant their own undoing ; also ; again like the Indians, they felt 
that their having hunted over the soil gave them a vague prescriptive 
right to its sole occupation, and they did their best to keep actual set- 
tlers out. In some cases, to avoid difficulty, their nominal claims were 
bought up ; generally, and rightly, they were disregarded. Yet they 
certainly had as good a right to the Little Missouri country as the Sioux 
have to most of the land on their present reservations. In fact, the 
mere statement of the case is sufficient to show the absurdity of assert- 
ing that the land really belonged to the Indians. The different tribes 
have always been utterly unable to define their own boundaries. Thus 
the Delawares and Wyandots, in 1785, though entirely separate nations, 
claimed and, in a certain sense, occupied almost exactly the same ter- 
ritory. 

Moreover, it was wholly impossible for our policy to be always 
consistent. Nowadays we undoubtedly ought to break up the great 
Indian reservations, disregard the tribal governments, allot the land 
in severalty (with, however, only a limited power of alienation), and 
treat the Indians as we do other citizens, with certain exceptions, for 
their sakes as well as ours. But this policy, which it would be wise 
to follow now, would have been wholly impracticable a century since. 
Our central government was then too weak either effectively to con- 
trol its own members or adequately to punish aggressions made upon 
them; and even if it had been strong, it would probably have proved 
impossible to keep entire order over such a vast, sparsely peopled 
frontier, with such turbulent elements on both sides. The Indians could 
not be treated as individuals at that time. There was no possible alter- 
native, therefore, to treating their tribes as nations, exactly as the 
French and English had done before us. Our difficulties were partly 
inherited from these, our predecessors, were partly caused by our own 
misdeeds, but were mainly the inevitable result of the conditions under 
which the problem had to be solved; no human wisdom or virtue could 
have worked out a peaceable solution. As a nation, our Indian policy 
is to be blamed, because of the weakness it displayed, because of its 
short-sightedness, and its occasional leaning to the policy of the sen- 
timental humanitarians ; and we have often promised what was impos- 
sible to perform; but there has been little wilful wrong-doing. Our 
government almost always tried to act fairly by the tribes ; the govern- 
mental agents (some of whom have been dishonest, and others foolish, 
but who, as a class, have been greatly traduced), in their reports, are 
far more apt to be unjust to the whites than to the reds; and the fed- 
eral authorities, though unable to prevent much of the injustice, still 
(lid check and control the white borderers very much more effectually 
than the Indian sachems and war-chiefs controlled their young braves. 
The tribes were warlike and bloodthirsty, jealous of each other and 
of the whites ; they claimed the land for their hunting-grounds, but 
their claims all conflicted with one another ; their knowledge of their 
own boundaries was so indefinite that they were always willing, for 
inadequate compensation, to sell land to which they had merely the 



THE ALGONQUINS 8i 

vaguest title; and yet, when once they had received the goods, were 
generally reluctant to make over even what they could; they coveted 
the goods and scalps of the whites, and the young warriors were 
always on the alert to commit outrages when they could do it with 
impunity. On the otlier hand, the evil-disposed whites regarded the 
Indians as fair game for robbery and violence of any kind; and the 
far larger number of well-disposed men, who would not willingly 
wrong any Indian, were themselves maddened by the memories of 
hideous injuries received. They bitterly resented the action of the 
government, which, in their eyes, failed to properly protect them and 
yet sought to keep them out of waste, uncultivated lands which they 
did not regard as being any more the property of the Indians than 
of their own hunters. With the best intentions, it was wholly impos- 
sible for any government to evolve order out of such a chaos without 
resort to the ultimate arbitrator — the sword. 

The purely sentimental historians take no account of the difficulties 
under which we labored nor of the countless wrongs and provocations 
we endured, while grossly magnifying the already lamentably large 
number of injuries for which we really deserve to be held responsible. 
To get a fair idea of the Indians of the present day, and of our deal- 
ings with them, we have fortunately one or two excellent books, notably 
"Hunting Grounds of the Great West" and "Our Wild Indians," by 
Colonel Richard I. Dodge (Hartford, 1882) ; and "Massacres of the 
Mountains," by J. P. Dunn (New York, 1886). As types of the oppo- 
site class, which are worse than valueless, and which nevertheless might 
cause some hasty future historian, unacquainted with the facts, to fall 
into grievous error, I may mention "A Century of Dishonor," by H. H. 
(Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson), and "Our Indian Wards" (George W. 
Manypenny). The latter is a mere spiteful diatribe against various 
army officers, and neither its manner nor its matter warrants more 
than an allusion. Mrs. Jackson's book is capable of doing more harm 
because it is written in good English, and because the author, who 
had lived a pure and noble life, was intensely in earnest in what she 
wrote, and had the most praiseworthy purpose — to prevent our com- 
mitting any more injustice to the Indians. This was all most proper; 
every good man or woman should do whatever is possible to make 
the government treat the Indians of the present time in the fairest and 
most generous spirit, and to provide against any repetition of such 
outrages as were inflicted upon the Nez Perces and upon part of the 
Cheyennes, or the wrongs with which the civilized nations of the 
Indian Territory are sometimes threatened. The purpose of the book 
is excellent, but the spirit in which it is written cannot be called even 
technically honest. As a polemic, it is possible that it did not do harm 
(though the effect of even a polemic is marred by hysterical indiffer- 
ence to facts). As a history it would be beneath criticism, were it 
not that the high character of the author and her excellent literary 
work in other directions have given it a fictitious value and made it 
much quoted by the large class of amiable but maudlin fanatics con- 



82 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

cerning whom it may be said that the excellence of their intentions 
but indifferently atones for tlie invariable folly and ill effect of their 
actions. It is not too much to say that the book is thoroughly un- 
trustworthy from cover to cover, and that not a single statement it 
contains should be accepted without independent proof ; for even those 
that are not absolutely false are often as bad on account of so much 
of the truth having been suppressed. One effect of this is, of course, 
that the author's recitals of the many real wrongs of Indian tribes 
utterly fail to impress us, because she lays quite as much stress on 
those that are nonexistent, and on the equally numerous cases where 
the wrongdoing was wholly the other way. To get an idea of the value 
of the work, it is only necessary to compare her statements about 
almost any tribe with the real facts, choosing at random; for instance, 
compare her accounts of the Sioux and the plains tribes generally with 
those given by Colonel Dodge in his two books ; or her recital of the 
Sandy Creek massacre with the facts as stated by Mr. Dunn — who is 
apt, if anything, to lean to the Indian's side. 

These foolish sentimentalists not only write foul slanders about their 
own countrymen, but are themselves the worst possible advisers on 
any point touching Indian management. They would do well to heed 
General Sheridan's bitter words, written when many Easterners were 
clamoring against the army authorities because they took partial ven- 
geance for a series of brutal outrages : *T do not know how far these 
humanitarians should be excused on account of their ignorance; but 
surely it is the only excuse that can give a shadow of justification for 
aiding and abetting such horrid crimes." 



CHAPTER V 

THE BACKWOODSMEN OF THE ALLEGHANIES 

I 769-1 774 

ALONG the western frontier of the colonies that were so 
soon to be the United States, among the foot-hills of 
the AUeghanies, on the slopes of the wooded moun- 
tains, and in the long trough-like valleys that lay between the 
ranges, dwelt a peculiar and characteristically American people. 

These frontier folk, the people of the up-country, or back- 
country, who lived near and among the forest-clad mountains, 
far away from the long-settled districts of flat coast plain and 
sluggish tidal river, were known to themselves and to others 
as backwoodsmen. They all bore a strong likeness to one 
another in their habits of thought and ways of living, and 
differed markedly from the people of the older and more civ- 
ilized communities to the eastward. The western border of 
our country was then formed by the great barrier-chains of 
the AUeghanies, which ran north and south from Pennsyl- 
vania through Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the 
trend of the valleys being parallel to the seacoast, and the 
mountains rising highest to the southward.^ It was difficult 
to cross the ranges from east to west, but it was both easy and 
natural to follow the valleys between. From Fort Pitt to the 
high hill-homes of the Cherokees this great tract of wooded 
and mountainous country possessed nearly the same features 
and characteristics, differing utterly in physical aspect from 
the alluvial plains bordering the ocean. 

So, likewise, the backwoods mountaineers who dwelt near 

* Georgia was then too weak and small to contribute much to the back- 
woods stock; her frontier was still in the low country. 

83 



84 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the great watershed that separates the Atlantic streams from 
the springs of the Watauga, the Kanawha, and the Mononga- 
hela, were all cast in the same mould, and resembled each other 
much more than any of them did their immediate neighbors 
of the plains. The backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania had little 
in common with the peaceful population of Quakers and Ger- 
mans who lived between the Delaware and the Susquehanna; 
and their near kinsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Great 
Smoky Mountains were separated by an equally wide gulf 
from the aristocratic planter communities that flourished in 
the tide-water regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. Near 
the coast the lines of division between the colonies corre- 
sponded fairly well with the differences between the popula- 
tions ; but after striking the foot-hills, though the political 
boundaries continued to go east and west, those both of ethnic 
and of physical significance began to run north and south. 

The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parent- 
age, and of mixed race; but the dominant strain in their blood 
was that of the Presbyterian Irish — the Scotch-Irish, as they 
were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Round- 
head and the Cavalier for their leadership in our history; nor 
have we been altogether blind to the deeds of the Hollander 
and the Huguenot; but it is doubtful if we have wholly 
realized the importance of the part played by that stern and 
virile people, the Irish whose preachers taught the creed of 
Knox and Calvin. These Irish representatives of the Cove- 
nanters were in the West almost what the Puritans were in 
the Northeast, and more than the Cavaliers were in the South. 
Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they nev- 
ertheless formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely 
American stock who were the pioneers of our people in their 
march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting set- 
tlers, who, with axe and rifle, won their way from the Allegha- 
nies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific.^ 

* Among the dozen or so most prominent backwoods pioneers of the 
West and Southwest, the men who were the leaders in exploring and 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 85 

The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a mixed 
people. Though mainly descended from Scotch ancestors — 
who came originally from both lowlands and highlands, from 
among both the Scotch Saxons and the Scotch Celts ^ — many 
of them were of English, a few of French Huguenot," and 
quite a number of true old Milesian Irish ^ extraction. They 
were the Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and 
despised the Catholics, whom their ancestors had conquered, 
and regarded the Episcopalians, by whom they themselves had 
been oppressed, with a more sullen, but scarcely less intense, 
hatred."* They were a truculent and obstinate people, and 
gloried in the warlike renown of their forefathers, the men 
who had followed Cromwell, and who had shared in the 
defense of Derry and in the victories of the Boyne and 
Aughrim.® 



*t>' 



settling the lands, and in fighting the Indians, British, and Mexicans, the 
Presbyterian Irish stock furnished Andrew Jackson, Samuel Houston, 
David Crockett, James Robertson ; Lewis, the leader of the backwoods 
hosts in their first great victory over the northwestern Indians ; and Camp- 
bell, their commander in their first great victory over the British. The 
other pioneers who stand beside the above were such men as Sevier, a 
Shenandoah Huguenot; Shelby, of Welsh blood; and Boone and Clark, 
both of English stock, the former from Pennsylvania, the latter from 
Virginia. 

^Of course, generations before they ever came to America, the McAfees, 
McClungs, Campbells, McCoshes, etc., had become indistinguishable from 
the Todds, Armstrongs, Elliotts, and the like. 

^A notable instance being that of the Lewis family, of Great Kanawha 
fame. 

^The Blount MSS. contain many muster-rolls and pay-rolls of the 
frontier forces of North Carolina during the year 1788. In these, and in 
the lists of names of settlers preserved in the Am. State Papers, Public 
Lands, II, etc., we find numerous names such as Shea, Drennan, O'Neil, 
O'Brien, Mahoney, Sullivan, O'Connell, Maguire, O'Donohue — in fact 
hardly a single Irish name is unrepresented. Of course, many of these 
were the descendants of imported Irish bond-servants ; but many were 
also free immigrants, belonging to the Presbyterian congregations, and 
sometimes appearing as pastors thereof. For the numerous Irish names 
of prominent pioneers (such as Donelly, Hogan, etc.) see McClung's 
"Western Adventures" (Louisville, 1879), 52, 167, 207, 308, etc.; also 
De Haas, 236, 289, etc.; Doddridge, 16, 288, 301, etc. 

* "Sketches of North Carolina," William Henry Foote, New York, 1846. 
An excellent book, written after much research. 

''For a few among many instances: Houston (see Lane's "Life of 
Houston") had ancestors at Derry and Aughrim; the McAfees (see 






86 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

They did not begin to come to America in any numbers till 
after the opening of the eighteenth century; by 1730 they 
were fairly swarming across the ocean, for the most part in 
two streams, the larger going to the port of Philadelphia, the 
smaller to the port of Charleston/ Pushing through the long- 
settled lowlands of the seacoast, they at once made their abode 
at the foot of the mountains, and became the outposts of 
civilization. From Pennsylvania, whither the great majority 
had come, they drifted south along the foot-hills, and down 
the long valleys, till they met their brethren from Charleston 
who had pushed up into the Carolina back-country. In this 
land of hills, covered by unbroken forest, they took root and 
flourished, stretching in a broad belt from north to south, a 
shield of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the sea- 
board and the red warriors of the wilderness. All through 
this region they were alike ; they had as little kinship with the 
Cavalier as with the Quaker ; the West was won by those who 
have been rightly called the Roundheads of the South, the 
same men who, before any others, declared for American 
independence." 

The two facts of most importance to remember in dealing 
with our pioneer history are, first, that the western portions 
of Virginia and the Carolinas were peopled by an entirely dif- 
ferent stock from that which had long existed in the tide-water 
regions of those colonies ; and, secondly, that, except for those 
in the Carolinas who came from Charleston, the immigrants 
of this stock were mostly from the North, from their great 
breeding-ground and nursery in western Pennsylvania.^ 

McAfee MSS.) and Irvine, one of the commanders on Crawford's expe- 
dition, were descendants of men who fought at the Boyne ("Crawford's 
Campaign," G. W. Butterfield, Cincinnati, 1873, p. 26) ; so with Lewis, 
Campbell, etc. 

U'^oote, 78. 

"Witness the Mecklenburg Declaration. 

* McAfee MSS. "Trans-Allegheny Pioneers" (John P. Hale), XVII. 
hootc, 188. See also Columbian Magasinc, I, 122, and Schopf, 406. Boone, 
Crockett Houston, Campbell. Lewis, were among the southwestern pio- 
neers whose families originally came from Pennsylvania. See "Annals 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 87 

That these Irish Presbyterians were a bold and hardy race 
is proved by their at once pushing past the settled regions, 
and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders of the white 
advance. They were the first and last set of immigrants to 
do this; all others have merely followed in the wake of their 
predecessors. But, indeed, they were fitted to be Americans 
from the very start; they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters; 
they deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own Bible, 
and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy. 
For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic sys- 
tems had been fundamentally democratic. In the hard life of 
the frontier they lost much of their religion, and they had 
but scant opportunity to give their children the schooling in 
which they believed; but what few meeting-houses and school- 
houses there were on the border were theirs.^ The numer- 
ous families of colonial English who came among them 
adopted their religion if they adopted any. The creed of 
the backwoodsman who had a creed at all was Presbyterian- 
ism ; for the Episcopacy of the tide-water lands obtained no 
foothold in the mountains, and the Methodists and Baptists 
had but just begun to appear in the West when the Revolution 
broke out." 

These Presbyterian Irish were, however, far from being 
the only settlers on the border, although more than any others 
they impressed the stamp of their peculiar character on the 
pioneer civilization of the West and Southwest. Great num- 
bers of immigrants of English descent came among them 
from the settled districts on the east; and though these later 
arrivals soon became indistinguishable from the people among 

of Augusta County, Va.," by Joseph A. Waddell, Richmond, 1888 (an 
excellent book), pp. 4, 276, 278, for a clear showing of the Presbyterian 
Irish origin of the West Virginians, and of the large German admixture. 

^The Irish schoolmaster was everywhere a feature of early Western 
society. 

^McAfee 'MSS. MS. Autobiography of Rev. Wm. Hickman, born in 
Virginia in 1747 (in Col. R. T. Durrett's library). "Trans-Alleghany 
Pioneers," 147. "History of Kentucky Baptists," J. H. Spencer (Cincin- 
nati, 1885). 



88 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

whom they settled, yet they certainly sometimes added a tone 
of their own to backwoods society, giving it here and there 
a slight dash of what we are accustomed to consider the 
distinctively Southern or cavalier spirit.^ There was like- 
wise a large German admixture, not only from the Germans 
of Pennsylvania, but also from those of the Carolinas.- A 
good many Huguenots likewise came,^ and a few Hollanders,* 
and even Swedes,^ from the banks of the Delaware, or perhaps 
from farther off still. 

* Boone, though of English descent, had no Virginia blood in his veins ; 
he was an exact type of the regular backwoodsman ; but in Clark, and 
still more in Blount, we see strong traces of the "cavalier spirit." Of 
course, the Cavaliers no more formed the bulk of the Virginia people 
than they did of Rupert's armies ; but the squires and yeomen who went 
to make up the mass took their tone from their leaders. 

^ Many of the most noted hunters and Indian fighters were of German 
origin. (See "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," John Carr, Nashville, 
1859, pp. 54 and 56, for Steiner and Mansker — or Stoner and Mansco.) 
Such were the Wetzels, famous in border annals, who lived near Wheel-- 
ing ; Michael Steiner, the Steiners being the forefathers of many of the 
numerous Kentucky Stoners of to-day; and Kasper Mansker, the "Mr. 
Mansco" of Tennessee writers. Every old Western narrative contains 
many allusions to "Dutchmen," as Americans very improperly call the 
Germans. Their names abound on the muster-rolls, pay-rolls, lists of set- 
tlers, etc., of the day (Blount MSS., State Department MSS., McAfee 
MSS., Am. State Papers, etc.) ; but it must be remembered that they 
are often Anglicized, when nothing remains to show the origin of the 
owners. We could not recognize in Custer and Herkomer, Kiister and 
Herckheimcr, were not the ancestral history of the two generals already 
known ; and in the backwoods, a man often loses sight of his ancestors 
in a couple of generations. In the Carolinas the Germans seem to have 
been almost as plentiful on the frontiers as the Irish (see Adair, 245, 
and Smyth's "Tour," I, 236). In Pennsylvania they lived nearer civiliza- 
tion (Schoolcraft, 3, 335; "Journey in the West in 1785," by Lewis 
Brantz), although also mixed with the borderers; the more adventurous 
among them naturally seeking the frontier. 

^ Giving to the backwoods society such families as the Seviers and 
Lenoirs. The Huguenots, like the Germans, frequently had their names 
Anglicized. The best known and most often quoted example is that of 
the Blancpied family, part of whom have become Whitefoots, while the 
others, living on the coast, have sufifered a marvellous sea-change, the 
name reappearing as "Blumpy." 

* To the Western American, who was not given to nice ethnic distinc- 
tions, both German and Hollander were simply Dutchmen ; but occasionally 
we find names like Van Meter, Van Buskirk, Van Swearingen, which 
carry their origin on their faces (De Haas, 317, 319; Doddridge, 307). 

'The Scandinavian names, in an unlettered community, soon become in- 
distinguishable from those of the surrounding Americans — Jansen, Peter- 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 89 

A single generation, passed under the hard conditions of 
Hfe in the wilderness, was enough to weld together into one 
people the representatives of these numerous and widely dif- 
ferent races; and the children of the next generation became 
indistinguishable from one another. Long before the first 
Continental Congress assembled, the backwoodsmen, what- 
ever their blood, had become Americans, one in speech, 
thought, and character, clutching firmly the land in which 
their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They 
had lost all remembrance of Europe and all sympathy with 
things European; they had become as emphatically products 
native to the soil as were the tough and supple hickories out 
of which they fashioned the handles of their long, light axes. 
Their grim, harsh, narrow lives were yet strangely fascinat- 
ing, and full of adventurous toil and danger; none but na- 
tures as strong, as freedom-loving, and as full of bold defiance 
as theirs could have endured existence on the terms which 
these men found pleasurable. Their iron surroundings made 
a mould which turned out all alike in the same shape. They 
resembled one another, and they differed from the rest of the 
world — even the world of America, and infinitely more, the 
world of Europe — in dress, in customs, and in mode of life. 

Where their lands abutted on the more settled districts to 
the eastward, the population was of course thickest, and 
their peculiarities least. Here and there at such points they 
built small backwoods burgs or towns, rude, straggling, un- 
kempt villages, with a store or two, a tavern — sometimes good, 
often a "scandalous hog-sty," where travellers were devoured 
by fleas, and every one slept and ate in one room^ — a small 
log schoolhouse, and a little church, presided over by a hard- 
featured Presbyterian preacher, gloomy, earnest, and zeal- 
sen, etc., being readily Americanized. It is, therefore, rarely that they 
show their parentage. Still, we now and then come across one that is 
unmistakable, as Erickson, for instance (see p. 51 of Colonel Reuben T. 
Durrett's admirable "Life and Writings of John Filson," Louisville and 
Cincinnati, 1884). 

* MS. Journal of Matthew Clarkson, 1766. See also "Voyage dans les 
fitats-Unis," La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Paris, L'An VII, I, 104. 



90 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ous, probably bigoted and narrow-minded, but nevertheless a 
great power for good in the community.^ 

However, the backwoodsmen as a class neither built towns 
nor loved to dwell therein. They were to be seen at their 
best in the vast, interminable forests that formed their chosen 
home. They won and kept their lands by force, and ever lived 
either at war or in dread of war. Hence they settled always 
in groups of several families each, all banded together for 
mutual protection. Their red foes were strong and terri- 
ble, cunning in council, dreadful in battle, merciless beyond 
belief in victory. The men of the border did not overcome 
and dispossess cowards and weaklings ; they marched forth 
to spoil the stout-hearted and to take for a prey the posses- 
sions of the men of might. Every acre, every rood of ground 
which they claimed had to be cleared by the axe and held 
with the rifle. Not only was the chopping down of the 
forests the first preliminary to cultivation, but it was also 
the surest means of subduing the Indians, to whom the 
unending stretches of choked woodland were an impenetrable 
cover behind which to move unseen, a shield in making as- 
saults, and a strong tower of defense in repelling counter- 
attacks. In the conquest of the West the backwoods axe, 
shapely, well-poised, with long haft and light head, was a 
servant hardly standing second even to the rifle ; the two 
were the national weapons of the American backwoodsman, 
and in their use he has never been excelled. 

When a group of families moved out into the wilderness 
they built themselves a station or stockade fort : a square 
palisade of upright logs, loopholed, with strong blockhouses 
as bastions at the corners. On one side at least was generally 
formed by the backs of the cabins themselves, all standing 
in a row ; and there was a great door or gate, that could 

' The borderers ha6 the true Calvinistic taste in preaching. Clarkson, 
in his journal of his Western trip, mentions with approval a sermon he 
heard as being "a very judicious and alarming discourse." 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 91 

be strongly barred in case of need. Often no iron what- 
ever was employed in any of the buildings. The square inside 
contained the provision sheds and frequently a strong central 
blockhouse as well. These forts, of course, could not stand 
against cannon, and they were always in danger when at- 
tacked with fire; but save for this risk of burning they were 
very effectual defenses against men without artillery, and 
were rarely taken, whether by whites or Indians, except by 
surprise. Few other buildings have played so important a 
part in our history as the rough stockade of the backwoods. 
The families only lived in the fort when there was war 
with the Indians, and even then not in the winter. At other 
times they all separated out to their own farms, universally 
called clearings, as they were always made by first cutting 
off the timber. The stumps were left to dot the fields of 
grain and Indian corn. The corn in especial was the stand- 
by and invariable resource of the Western settler; it was 
the crop on which he relied to feed his family, and when 
hunting or on a war trail the parched grains were carried 
in his leather wallet to serve often as his only food. But he 
planted orchards and raised melons, potatoes, and many other 
fruits and vegetables as well; and he had usually a horse 
or two, cows, and perhaps hogs and sheep, if the wolves and 
bears did not interfere. If he was poor his cabin was made 
of unhewn logs, and held but a single room; if well-to-do, 
the logs were neatly hewed, and besides the large living and 
eating room with its huge stone fireplace, there was also a 
small bedroom and a kitchen, while a ladder led to the loft 
above, in which the boys slept. The floor was made of 
puncheons, great slabs of wood hewed carefully out, and 
the roof of clapboards. Pegs of wood were thrust into the 
sides of the house, to serve instead of a wardrobe; and buck 
antlers, thrust into joists, held the ever-ready rifles. The 
table was a great clapboard set on four wooden legs; there 
were three-legged stools, and in the better sort of houses old- 



92 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

fashioned rocking-chairs.^ The couch or bed was warmly 
covered with blankets, bearskins, and deer-hides. - 

These clearings lay far apart from one another in the 
wilderness. Up to the door-sills of the log huts stretched 
the solemn and mysterious forest. There were no openings 
to break its continuity; nothing but endless leagues on 
leagues of shadowy, wolf -haunted woodland. The great trees 
towered aloft till their separate heads were lost in the mass 
of foliage above, and the rank underbrush choked the spaces 
between the trunks. On the higher peaks and ridge crests 
of the mountains there were straggling birches and pines, 
hemlocks and balsam firs ; ^ elsewhere, oaks, chestnuts, hick- 
ories, maples, beeches, walnuts, and great tulip-trees grew 
side by side with many other kinds. The sunlight could not 
penetrate the roofed archway of murmuring leaves ; through 
the gray aisles of the forest men walked always in a kind 
of midday gloaming. Those who had lived in the open plains 
felt when they came to the backwoods as if their heads were 
hooded. Save on the border of a lake, from a cliff-top, or on 
a bald knob — that is, a bare hill-shoulder — they could not 
anywhere look out for any distance. 

All the land was shrouded in one vast forest. It covered 
the mountains from crest to river-bed, filled the plains, and 
stretched in sombre and melancholy wastes toward the ]\Iis- 
sissippi. All that it contained, all that lay hid within it 
and beyond it, none could tell; men only knew that their 
boldest hunters, however deeply they had penetrated, had not 
yet gone through it, that it was the home of the game they 

' McAfee MSS. 

^In the McAfee MSS. there is an amusing mention of the skin of a 
huge bull elk. killed by the father, which the youngsters christened "old 
ellick"; they used to quarrel for the possession of "it on cold nights, as 
it was very warm, though if the hair side was turned in it became slip- 
pery and apt to slide off the bed. 

'On the mountains the climate, flora, and fauna were all those of the 
North, not of the adjacent Southern lowlands. The ruffed grouse, red 
squirrel, snowbird, various Canadian warblers, and a peculiar species of 
boreal field-mouse, the evotomys, are all found as far south as the Great 
Smokies. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 93 

followed and the wild beasts that preyed on their flocks, and 
that deep in its tangled depths lurked their red foes, hawk- 
eyed and wolf -hearted. 

Backwoods society was simple, and the duties and rights 
of each member of the family were plain and clear. The man 
was the armed protector and provider, the bread-winner; the 
woman was the housewife and child-bearer. They married 
young and their families were large, for they were strong 
and healthy, and their success in life depended on their own 
stout arms and willing hearts. There was everywhere great 
equality of conditions. Land was plenty and all else scarce; 
so courage, thrift, and industry were sure of their reward. 
All had small farms, with the few stock necessary to culti- 
vate them; the farms being generally placed in the hollows, 
the division lines between them, if they were close together, 
being the tops of the ridges and the watercourses, especially 
the former. The buildings of each farm were usually at its 
lowest point, as if in the centre of an amphitheatre.^ Each 
was on an average of about four hundred acres,^ but some- 
times more.^ Tracts of low, swampy grounds, possibly some 
miles from the cabin, were cleared for meadows, the fodder 
being stacked, and hauled home in winter. 

Each backwoodsman was not only a small farmer but 
also a hunter; for his wife and children depended for their 
meat upon the venison and bear's flesh procured by his rifle. 

^Doddridge's "Settlements and Indian Wars" (133), written by an eye- 
witness ; it is the most valuable book we have on old-time frontier ways 
and customs. 

' The land-laws differed at different times in different colonies ; but this 
was the usual size, at the outbreak of the Revolution, of the farms along 
the Western frontier, as under the laws of Virginia, then obtaining from 
the Holston to the Alleghany, this amount was allotted every settler who 
built a cabin or raised a crop of corn. 

' Besides the right to four hundred acres, there was also a pre-emption 
right to one thousand acres more adjoining, to be secured by a land-office 
warrant. As between themselves, the settlers had what they called 
"tomahawk rights," made by simply deadening a certain number of trees 
with a hatchet. They were similar to the rights conferred in the West 
now by what is called a "claim shack" or hut, built to hold some good 
piece of land ; that is, they conferred no title whatever, except that some- 
times men would pay for them rather than have trouble with the claimant. 



94 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The people were restless and always on the move. After 
being a little while in a place, some of the men would settle 
down permanently, while others would again drift off, farm- 
ing and hunting alternately to support their families.^ The 
backwoodsman's dress was in great part borrowed from his 
Indian foes. He wore a fur cap or felt hat, moccasins, and 
either loose, thin trousers, or else simply leggings of buck- 
skin or elk-hide, and the Indian breech-clout. He was always 
clad in the fringed hunting-shirt, of homespun or buckskin, 
the most picturesque and distinctively national dress ever worn 
in America. It was a loose smock or tunic, reaching nearly to 
the knees, and held in at the waist by a broad belt, from 
which hung the tomahawk and scalping-knife.^ His weapon 
was the long, small-bore, flint-lock rifle, clumsy, and ill-bal- 
anced, but exceedingly accurate. It was very heavy, and 
when upright, reached to the chin of a tall man; for the 
barrel of thick, soft iron, was four feet in length, while 
the stock was short, and the butt scooped out. Sometimes it 
was plain, sometimes ornamented. It was generally bored 
out — or, as the expression then was, "sawed out" — to carry 
a ball of seventy, more rarely of thirty or forty, to the 
pound; and was usually of backwoods manufacture.^ The 
marksman almost always fired from a rest, and rarely at a 
very long range; and the shooting was marvellously accu- 
rate.* 

In the backwoods there was very little money; barter was 
the common form of exchange, and the peltries were often 
used as a circulating medium, a beaver, otter, fisher, dressed 

* McAfee MSS. (particularly "Autobiography of Robert McAfee.") 

'To this day it is worn in parts of the Rocky Mountains, and even 
occasionally, here and there, in the Alleghanies. 

' The above is the description of one of Boone's rifles, now in the pos- 
session of Colonel Durrett. According to the inscription on the barrel it 
was made in Louisville, Ky., in 1782, by M. Humble. It is perfectly plain; 
whereas one of Floyd's rifles, which I have also seen, is much more highly 
finished, and with some ornamentation. 

M'or the opinion of a foreign military observer on the phenomenal 
accuracy of backwoods marksmanship, see General Victor Collot's "Voyage 
en Amerique," p. 242. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 95 

buckskin or large bearskin being reckoned as equal to two 
foxes or wildcats, four coons, or eight minks.^ A young 
man inherited nothing from his father but his strong frame 
and eager heart ; but before him lay a whole continent wherein 
to pitch his farm, and he felt ready to marry as soon as he 
became of age, even though he had nothing but his clothes, 
his horses, his axe, and his rifle. ^ If a girl was well off, and 
had been careful and industrious, she might herself bring 
a dowry, of a cow and a calf, a brood-mare, a bed well stocked 
with blankets, and a chest containing her clothes^ — the latter 
not very elaborate, for a woman's dress consisted of a hat 
or poke bonnet, a "bedgown," perhaps a jacket, and a linsey 
petticoat, while her feet were thrust into coarse shoepacks or 
moccasins. Fine clothes were rare; a suit of such cost more 
than two hundred acres of good land.^ 

The first lesson the backwoodsmen learnt was the neces- 
sity of self-help; the next, that such a community could only 
thrive if all joined in helping one another. Log-rollings, 
house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, quiltings, 
and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came to- 
gether to do what the family itself could hardly accomplish 
alone. Every such meeting was the occasion of a frolic and 
dance for the young people, whiskey and rum being plenti- 
ful, and the host exerting his utmost power to spread the 
table with backwoods delicacies — bear meat and venison, vege- 
tables from the "truck-patch," where squashes, melons, beans, 
and the like were grown, wild fruits, bowls of milk, and apple 
pies, which were the acknowledged standard of luxury.^ At 
the better houses there was metheglin or small beer, cider, 
cheese, and biscuits. Tea was so little known that many 

^MS. copy of Matthew Clarkson's journal in 1766. 

"McAfee MSS. ("Autobiography of Robert McAfee"). 

' Ibid. 

""Memoirs of the Hist. Soc. of Penn.," 1826. Account of first settle- 
ments, etc., by John Watson (1804). 

^ Ibid. An admirable account of what such a frolic was some thirty-five 
years later is to be found in Edward Eggleston's "Circuit Rider." 



96 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of the backwoods people were not aware it was a beverage 
and at first attempted to eat the leaves with salt or butter.^ 

The young men prided themselves on their bodily strength, 
and were always eager to contend against one another in 
athletic games, such as wrestling, racing, jumping and lifting 
flour-barrels; and they also sought distinction in vying with 
one another at their work. Sometimes they strove against 
one another singly, sometimes they divided into parties, each 
bending all its energies to be first in shucking a given heap 
of corn or cutting (with sickles) an allotted patch of wheat. 
Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies, 
also in the backwoods fashions, wearing their hair long and 
delighting in the rude finery of hunting-shirts embroidered 
with porcupine quills; they were loud, boastful, and pro- 
fane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally sav- 
age fights were frequent; the combatants, who were sur- 
rounded by rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, 
biting, and gouging. The fall of one of them did not stop 
the fight, for the man who was down was maltreated without 
mercy until he called "enough." The victor always bragged 
savagely of his prowess, often leaping on a stump, crowing 
and flapping his arms. This last was a thoroughly American 
touch; but otherwise one of these contests was less a boxing- 
match than a kind of backwoods pankrdtion, no less revolt- 
ing than its ancient prototype of Olympic fame. Yet, if the 
uncouth borderers were as brutal as the highly polished 
Greeks, they were more manly ; defeat was not necessarily 
considered disgrace, a man often fighting when he was cei- 
tain to be beaten, while the onlookers neither hooted nor pelted 
the conquered. We first hear of the noted Indian fighter, 
Simon Kenton, as leaving a rival for dead after one of these 
ferocious duels, and fleeing from his home in terror of the 
punishment that might follow the deed.- Such fights were 

' Such incidents are mentioned again and again by Watson, Milfort, 
Doddridge, Carr, and other writers. 

' McClung's "Western Adventures." All Eastern and European observers 
comment with horror on the border brawls, especially the eye-gcuging. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 97 

specially frequent when the backwoodsmen went into the 
little frontier towns to see horse-races or fairs. 

A wedding was always a time of festival. If there was 
a church anywhere near, the bride rode thither on horseback 
behind her father, and after the service her pillion was shifted 
to the bridegroom's steed. ^ If, as generally happened, there 
was no church, the groom and his friends, all armed, rode 
to the house of the bride's father, plenty of whiskey being 
drunk, and the men racing recklessly along the narrow bridle- 
paths, for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the 
backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was per- 
formed, and then a huge dinner was eaten; after which the 
fiddling and dancing began, and were continued all the after- 
noon, and most of the night as well. A party of girls stole 
off the bride and put her to bed in the loft above; and a party 
of young men then performed the like service for the groom. 
The fun was hearty and coarse, and the toasts always included 
one to the young couple with the wish that they might have 
many big children ; for as long as they could remember the 
backwoodsmen had lived at war, while looking ahead they 
saw no chance of its ever stopping, and so each son was 
regarded as a future warrior, a help to the whole community.^ 
The neighbors all joined again in chopping and rolling the 
logs for the young couple's future house, then in raising- 
Englishmen, of course, in true provincial spirit, complacently contrasted 
them with their own boxing-fights ; Frenchmen, equally of course, were 
more struck by the resemblances than the differences between the two 
forms of combat. Milfort gives a very amusing account of the Anglo- 
Amcricains d'linc cspccc particidicre whom he calls "crakeurs on gau- 
gcuis" (crackers or gougers). He remarks that he found them tons 
borgncs (as a result of their pleasant fashion of eye-gouging — a back- 
woods bully in speaking of another would often threaten to "measure the 
length of his eye-strings") and that he doubts if there can exist in the 
world des hommes plus mediants que ces habitants. 

These fights were among the numerous backwoods habits that showed 
Scotch rather than English ancestry. "I attempted to keep him down, 
in order to improve my success, after the manner of my own country" 
("Roderick Random"). 

^ Watson. * Doddridge. 



98 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the house itself, and finally in feasting and dancing at the 
housewarming. 

Funerals were simple, the dead body being carried to the 
grave in a coffin slung on poles and borne by four men. 

There was not much schooling, and few boys or girls 
learnt much more than reading, writing, and ciphering up to 
the rule of three.^ Where the schoolhouses existed they were 
only dark, mean log huts, and, if in the Southern colonies, 
were generally placed in the so-called "old fields," or aban- 
doned farms grown up with. pines. The schoolmaster boarded 
about with the families ; his learning was rarely great, nor 
was his discipline good, in spite of the frequency and sever- 
ity of the canings. The price for such tuition was at the rate 
of twenty shillings a year, in Pennsylvania currency.^ 

Each family did everything that could be done for itself. 
The father and sons worked with axe, hoe, and sickle. Al- 
most every house contained a loom, and almost every woman 
was a weaver. Linsey-woolsey, made from flax grown near 
the cabin, and of wool from the backs of the few sheep, was 
the warmest and most substantial cloth ; and when the flax- 
crop failed and the flocks were destroyed by wolves, the chil- 
dren had but scanty covering to hide their nakedness. The 
man tanned the buckskin, the woman was tailor and shoe- 
maker, and made the deerskin sifters to be used instead of 
bolting-cloths. There were a few pewter spoons in use ; but 
the table furniture consisted mainly of handmade trenchers, 
platters, noggins, and bowls. The cradle was of peeled hick- 
ory bark.^ Ploughshares had to be imported, but harrows 
and sleds were made without difficulty; and the cooper work 
was well done. Chaff beds were thrown on the floor of the 
loft, if the house-owner was well off. Each cabin had a 
hand-mill and a hominy-block; the last was borrowed from 
the Indians, and was only a large block of wood, with a hole 
burned in the top, as a mortar, where the pestle was worked. 

*McAfeeMSS. 'Watson 

'McAfee MSS. See, also, Doddridge and Watson. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 99 

If there were any sugar-maples accessible, they were tapped 
every year. 

But some articles, especially salt and iron, could not be 
produced in the backwoods. In order to get them each 
family collected during the year all the furs possible, these 
being valuable and yet easily carried on pack-horses, the sole 
means of transport. Then, after seeding-time, in the fall, 
the people of a neighborhood ordinarily joined in sending 
down a train of peltry-laden pack-horses to some large sea- 
coast or tidal-river trading town, where their burdens were 
bartered for the needed iron and salt. The unshod horses 
all had bells hung round their necks ; the clappers were 
stopped during the day, but when the train was halted for 
the night, and the horses were hobbled and turned loose, the 
bells were once more unstopped.^ Several men accompanied 
each little caravan, and sometimes they drove with them steers 
and hogs to sell on the seacoast. A bushel of alum salt was 
worth a good cow and calf, and as each of the poorly fed, 
undersized pack-animals could carry but two bushels, the 
mountaineers prized it greatly, and, instead of salting or 
pickling their venison, they jerked it by drying it in the sun 
or smoking it over a fire. 

The life of the backwoodsmen was one long struggle. The 
forest had to be felled; droughts, deep snows, freshets, cloud- 
bursts, forest-fires, and all the other dangers of a wilderness 
life faced. Swarms of deer-flies, mosquitoes, and midges 
rendered life a torment in the weeks of hot weather. Rattle- 
snakes and copperheads were very plentiful, and, the former 
especially, constant sources of danger and death. Wolves 
and bears were incessant and inveterate foes of the live stock, 

* Doddridge, 156. He gives an interesting anecdote of one man engaged 
in_ helping such a pack-train, the bell of whose horse was stolen. The 
thief was recovered, and whipped as a punishment, the owner exclaiming 
as he laid the strokes lustily on : "Think what a rascally figure I should 
make in the streets of Baltimore without a bell on my horse." He had 
never been out of the woods before; he naturally wished to look well on 
his first appearance in civilized life, and it never occurred to him that a 
good horse was left without a bell anywhere. 



loo THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and the cougar, or panther, occasionally attacked man as 
well.^ More terrible still, the wolves sometimes went mad, 
and the men who then encountered them were almost certain 
to be bitten and to die of hydrophobia.^ 

Every true backwoodsman was a hunter. Wild turkeys 
were plentiful. The pigeons at times filled the woods with 
clouds that hid the sun and broke down the branches on their 
roosting-grounds as if a whirlwind had passed. The black 
and gray squirrels swarmed, devastating the corn-fields, and 
at times gathering in immense companies and migrating across 
mountain and river. The hunter's ordinary game was the 
deer, and after that the bear; the elk was already growing 
uncommon. No form of labor is harder than the chase, and 
none is so fascinating nor so excellent as a training-school 
for war. The successful still-hunter of necessity possessed 
skill in hiding and in creeping noiselessly upon the wary 
quarry, as well as in imitating the notes and calls of the 
different beasts and birds ; skill in the use of the rifle and 
in throwing the tomahawk he already had; and he perforce 
acquired keenness of eye, thorough acquaintance with wood- 
craft, and the power of standing the severest strains of 
fatigue, hardship, and exposure. He lived out in the woods 
for many months with no food but meat, and no shelter 
whatever, unless he made a lean-to of brush or crawled into 
a hollow sycamore. 

Such training stood the frontier folk in good stead when 
they were pitted against the Indians; without it they could 
not even have held their own, and the white advance would 
have been absolutely checked. Our frontiers were pushed 

*An instance of this, which happened in my mother's family, has been 
mentioned elsewhere ("Hunting Trips of a Ranchman"). Even the 
wolves occasionally attacked man ; Audubon gives an example. 

/Doddridge, 194. Dodge, in his "Hunting Grounds of the Great West," 
gives some recent instances. Bears were sometimes dangerous to human 
life. Doddridge, 64. A slave on the plantation of my great-grandfather 
in Georgia was once regularly scalped by a she bear whom he had tried 
to rob of her cubs, and ever after he was called, both by the other negroes 
and by the children on the plantation, "Bear Bob." 



THE BACKWOODSMEN /f^^^T^^ 

westward by the warlike skill and adventuroua^rsonal prow- \ 
ess of the individual settlers; regular armies by themselves r-\\ 
could have done little. For one square mile the regular y^if 
armies added to our domain, the settlers added ten — a hun-^?/ 
dred would probably be nearer the truth. A'" race of peace- / 
ful, unwarlike farmers would have been helpless before such 
foes as the red Indians, and no auxiliary military force could 
have protected them or enabled them to move westward. Col- 
onists fresh from the Old World, no matter how thrifty, 
steady-going, and industrious, could not hold their own on 
the frontier; they had to settle where they were protected 
from the Indians by a living barrier of bold and self-reliant 
American borderers.^ The West would never have been set- 
tled save for the fierce courage and the eager desire to brave 
danger so characteristic of the stalwart backwoodsmen. 

These armed hunters, wood-choppers, and farmers were 
their own soldiers. They built and manned their own forts; 
they did their own fighting under their own commanders. 
There were no regiments of regular troops along the fron- 
tier.- In the event of an Indian inroad each borderer had 
to defend himself until there was time for them all to gather 
together to repel or avenge it. Every man was accustomed to 
the use of arms from his childhood ; when a boy was twelve 
years old he was given a rifle and made a fort-soldier, with a 
loophole where he was to stand if the station was attacked. 
The war was never-ending, for even the times of so-called 
peace were broken by forays and murders ; a man might 
grow from babyhood to middle age on the border, and yet 
never remember a year in which some one of his neighbors 
did not fall a victim to the Indians. 

There was everywhere a rude military organization, which 
included all the able-bodied men of the community. Every 
settlement had h» colonels and captains ; but these officers, 

^ Schopf , I, 404. 

" The insignificant garrisons at one or two places need not be taken into 
account, as they were of absolutely no effect, 



102 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

both in their training and in the authority they exercised, 
corresponded much more nearly to Indian chiefs than to the 
regular army men whose titles they bore. They had no. 
means whatever of enforcing their orders, and their tumultu- 
ous and disorderly levies of sinewy riflemen were hardly as 
well disciplined as the Indians themselves.^ The superior 
officer could advise, entreat, lead, and influence his men, but 
he could not command them, or, if he did, the men obeyed 
him only just so far as it suited them. If an officer planned 
a scout or campaign, those who thought proper accompanied 
him, and the others stayed at home, and even those who 
went out came back if the fit seized them, or perchance fol- 
lowed the lead of an insubordinate junior officer whom they 
liked better than they did his superior.- There was no com- 
pulsion to perform military duties beyond dread of being 
disgraced in the eyes of the neighbors, and there was no 
pecuniary reward for performing them ; nevertheless the 
moral sentiment of a backwoods community was too robust 
to tolerate habitual remisses in military affairs, and the cow- 
ard and laggard were treated with utter scorn, and were 
generally in the end either laughed out, or "hated out," of 
the neighborhood, or else got rid of in a still more sum- 
mary manner. Among people naturally brave and reckless, 

^Brantz Mayer, in "Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap" (Albany, 
1867), IX, speaks of the pioneers as "comparatively few in numbers," and 
of the Indian as "numerous, and fearing not only the superior weapons 
of his foe, but the organization and discipline which together made the 
comparatively few equal to the greater number." This sentence embodies 
a variety of popular misconceptions. The pioneers were more numerous 
than the Indians ; the Indians were generally, at least in the Northwest, 
as well armed as the whites, and in military matters the Indians were 
actually (sec Smith's narrative, and almost all competent authorities) 
superior in organization and discipline to their pioneer foes. Most of 
our battles against the Indians of the Western woods, whether won or 
lost, were fought by superior numbers on our side. Individually, or in 
small parties, the frontiersmen gradually grew to be a match for the 
Indians, man for man, at least in many cases, but this was only true of 
large bodies of them if they were commanded by some one naturally able 
to control their unruly spirits. 

'As examples take Clark's last Indian campaign and the battle of Blue 
Licks. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 103 

this public opinion acted fairly effectively, and there was 
generally but little shrinking from military service.^ 

A backwoods levy was formidable because of the high av- 
erage courage and prowess of the individuals composing it; 
it was on its own ground much more effective than a like 
force of regular soldiers, but of course it could not be trusted 
on a long campaign. The backwoodsmen used their rifles 
better than the Indians, and also stood punishment better, 
]jut they never matched them in surprises nor in skill in 
taking advantage of cover, and very rarely equalled their 
discipline in the battle itself. After all, the pioneer was pri- 
marily a husbandman; the time spent in chopping trees and 
tilling the soil his foe spent in preparing for or practising 
forest warfare, and so the former, thanks to the exercise of 
the very qualities which in the end gave him the possession 
of the soil, could not, as a rule, hope to rival his antagonist 
in the actual conflict itself. When large bodies of the red 
men and white borderers were pitted against each other, the 
former were if anything the more likely to have the advan- 
tage.^ But the whites soon copied from the Indians their 
system of individual and private warfare, and they probably 
caused their foes far more damage and loss in this way than 
in the large expeditions. Many noted border scouts and 
Indian fighters — such men as Boone, Kenton, Wetzel, Brady, 
McCulloch, Mansker ^ — grew to overmatch their Indian foes 
at their own game, and held themselves above the most re- 

^ Doddridge, i6i, 185. 

*At the best such a frontier levy was composed of men of the type of 
Leatherstocking, Ishmael Bush, Tom Hutter, Harry Marsh, Bill Kirby, 
and Aaron Thousandacres. When animated by a common and overmas- 
tering passion, such a body would be almost irresistible; but it could not 
hold together long, and there was generally a plentiful mixture of men 
less trained in woodcraft, and therefore useless in forest fighting ; while 
if, as must generally be the case in any body, there were a number of 
cowards in the ranks, the total lack of discipline not only permitted them 
to flinch from their work with impunity, but also allowed them, by their 
example, to infect and demoralize their braver companions. 

' Haywood, De Haas, Withers, McClung, and other border annalists, 
give innumerable anecdotes about these and many other men, illustrating 
their feats of fierce prowess, and, too often, of brutal ferocity. 



104 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

nowned warriors. But these men carried the spirit of defiant 
self-rehance to such an extreme that their best work was 
always done when they were alone or in small parties of but 
four or five. They made long forays after scalps and horses, 
going a wonderful distance, enduring extreme hardship, risk- 
ing the most terrible of deaths, and harrying the hostile tribes 
into a madness of terror and revengeful hatred. 

As it was in military matters, so it was with the admin- 
istration of justice by the frontiersmen; they had few courts, 
and knew but little law, and yet they contrived to preserve 
order and morality with rough effectiveness, by combining 
to frown down on the grosser misdeeds, and to punish the 
more flagrant misdoers. Perhaps the spirit in which they 
acted can best be shown by the recital of an incident in the 
career of the three McAfee brothers,^ who were among the 
pioneer hunters of Kentucky. Previous to trying to move 
their families out to the new country, they made a cache of 
clothing, implements, and provisions, which in their absence 
was broken into and plundered. They caught the thief, "a 
little diminutive, red-headed white man," a runaway convict 
servant from one of the tide-water counties of Virginia. In 
the first impulse of anger at finding that he was the criminal, 
one of the McAfees rushed at him to kill him with his toma- 
hawk; but the weapon turned, the man was only knocked 
down, and his assailant's gusty anger subsided as quickly as 
it had risen, giving way to a desire to do stern but fair 
justice. So the three captors formed themselves into a court, 
examined into the case, heard the man in his own defense, 
and after due consultation decided that "according to their 
opinion of the laws he had forfeited his life, and ought to 
be hung"; but none of them were willing to execute the 
sentence in cold blood, and they ended by taking their pris- 
oner back to his master. 

The incident was characteristic in more than one way. 

* McAfee MSS. The story is told both in the "Autobiography of Robert 
McAfee" and in the "Jlistory of the First Settlement on Salt River." 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 105 

The prompt desire of the backwoodsman to avenge his own 
wrong; his momentary furious anger, speedily quelled and 
replaced by a dogged determination to be fair but to exact 
full retribution ; the acting entirely without regard to legal 
forms or legal officials, but yet in a spirit which spoke well 
for the doer's determination to uphold the essentials that 
make honest men law-abiding ; together with the good faith of 
the whole proceeding, and the amusing ignorance that it 
would have been in the least unlawful to execute their own 
rather harsh sentence — all these were typical frontier traits. 
Some of the same traits appear in the treatment commonly 
adopted in the backwoods to meet the case — of painfully fre- 
quent occurrence in the times of Indian wars — where a man 
taken prisoner by the savages, and supposed to be murdered, 
returned after two or three years' captivity, only to find his 
wife married again. In the wilderness a husband was almost 
a necessity to a woman ; her surroundings made the loss of 
the protector and provider an appalHng calamity; and the 
widow, no matter how sincere her sorrow, soon remarried — 
for there were many suitors where women were not over- 
plenty. If in such a case the one thought dead returned, the 
neighbors and the parties interested seem frequently to have 
held a sort of informal court, and to have decided that the 
woman should choose either of the two men she wished to 
be her husband, the other being pledged to submit to the 
decision and leave the settlement. Evidently no one had the 
least idea that there was any legal irregularity in such pro- 
ceedings.^ 

The McAfees themselves and the escaped convict servant 
whom they captured typify the two prominent classes of the 
backwoods people. The frontier, in spite of the outward uni- 
formity of means and manners, is pre-eminently the place of 
sharp contrasts. The two extremes of society — the strong- 

^ Incidents of this sort are frequently mentioned. Generally, the woman 
went back to her first husband. "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," John 
Carr, Nashville, 1859, p. 231. 



io6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

est, best, and most adventurous, and the weakest, most shift- 
less, and vicious — are those which seem naturally to drift to 
the border. Most of the men who came to the backwoods to 
hew out homes and rear families were stern, manly, and 
honest; but there was also a large influx of people drawn 
from the worst immigrants that perhaps ever were brought 
to America — the mass of convict servants, redemptioners, 
and the like, who formed such an excessively undesirable sub- 
stratum to the otherwise excellent population of the tide- 
water regions in Virginia and the Carolinas.^ Many of 
the Southern crackers or poor whites spring from this class, 
which also in the backwoods gave birth to generations of 
violent and hardened criminals, and to an even greater num- 
ber of shiftless, lazy, cowardly cumberers of the earth's sur- 
face. They had in many places a permanently bad effect 
upon the tone of the whole community. 

Moreover, the influence of heredity was no more plainly 
perceptible than was the extent of individual variation. If 
a member of a bad family wished to reform, he had every 
opportunity to do so; if a member of a good family had 
vicious propensities, there was nothing to check them. All 
qualities, good and bad, are intensified and accentuated in 
the life of the wilderness. The man who in civilization is 
merely sullen and bad-tempered becomes a murderous, treach- 
erous ruffian when transplanted to the wilds; while, on the 
other hand, his cheery, quiet neighbor develops into a hero, 
ready uncomplainingly to lay down his life for his friend. 
One who in an Eastern city is merely a backbiter and slan- 
derer, in the Western woods lies in wait for his foe with a 
rifle; sharp practice in the East becomes highway robbery in 
the West ; but at the same time negative good-nature becomes 
active self-sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is trans- 
lated into a prompt and determined war upon vice. The 
ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his debts paid 

^See "A Short History of the Engh"sh Colonies in America," bv Henry 
Cabot Lodge (New York, 1886), for an account of these people. ' 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 107 

a couple of times and is then forced to resign from his clubs 
and lead a cloudy but innocuous existence on a small pension, 
in the other abruptly finishes his career by being hung for 
horse-stealing. 

In the backwoods the lawless led lives of abandoned wick- 
edness; they hated good for good's sake, and did their ut- 
most to destroy it. Where the bad element was large, gangs 
of horse thieves, highwaymen, and other criminals often 
united with the uncontrollable young men of vicious tastes, 
who were given to gambling, fighting, and the like. They 
then formed half-secret organizations, often of great extent 
and with wide ramifications; and if they could control a com- 
munity they established a reign of terror, driving out both 
ministers and magistrates, and killing without scruple those 
who interfered with them. The good men in such a case 
banded themselves together as regulators and put down the 
wicked with ruthless severity, by the exercise of lynch-law, 
shooting and hanging the worst offhand.* 

Jails were scarce in the wilderness, and often were en- 
tirely wanting in a district, which, indeed, was quite likely 
to lack legal officers also. If punishment was inflicted at all 
it was apt to be severe, and took the form of death or whip- 
ping. An impromptu jury of neighbors decided with a rough- 
and-ready sense of fair play and justice what punishment the 
crime demanded, and then saw to the execution of their own 
decree. Whipping was the usual reward for theft. Occa- 
sionally, torture was resorted to, but not often; and, to their 
honor be it said, the backwoodsmen were horrified at the 
treatment accorded both to black slaves and to white convict 
servants in the lowlands.^ 

^ The regulators of backwoods society corresponded exactly to the vigi- 
lantes of the Western border to-day. In many of the cases of lynch-law 
which have come to my knowledge the efifect has been healthy for the 
community; but sometimes great injustice is done. Generally, the vigi- 
lantes, by a series of summary executions, do really good work ; but I 
have rarely known them fail, among the men whom they killed for good 
reason, to also kill one or two either by mistake or to gratify private 
malice. ^ See Doddridge. 



io8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

They were superstitious, of course, believing in witchcraft 
and signs and omens; and it may be noted that their super- 
stition showed a singular mixture of Old World survivals 
and of practices borrowed from the savages or evolved by 
the very force of their strange surroundings. At the bot- 
tom they were deeply religious in their tendencies; and al- 
though ministers and meeting-houses were rare, yet the back- 
woods cabins often contained Bibles, and the mothers used to 
instill into the minds of their children reverence for Sunday,^ 
while many even of the hunters refused to hunt on that day.^ 
Those of them who knew the right honestly tried to live 
up to it, in spite of the manifold temptations to backsliding 
offered by their lives of hard and fierce contention.^ But 
Calvinism, though more congenial to them than Episcopacy, 
and infinitely more so than Catholicism, was too cold for 
the fiery hearts of the borderers; they were not stirred to 
the depths of their natures till other creeds, and, above all, 
Methodism, worked their way into the wilderness. 

Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they had 
hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, 
strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by 
gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their 
very hearts' core. Their lives were harsh and narrow, they 
gained their bread by their blood and sweat, in the unending 
struggle with the wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered 
terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their 
foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were re- 
lentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; 
they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their 
friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many 
failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the 
wilderness and hold it against all comers. 

J McAfee MSS. 'Doddridge. 

' Said one old Indian fighter, a Colonel Joseph Brown, of Tennessee, with 
quaint truthfulness: "I have tried also to be a religious man, but have not 
always, in a life of so much adventure and strife, been able to act con- 
<iistcnt\y." —Southwest cm Monthly, Nashville, 1851, I, 80. 



THE BACKWOODSMEN 109 

NOTE 

In Mr. Shaler's entertaining- "History of Kentucky" there is an 
account of the population of the Western frontiers and Kentucky, in- 
teresting because it illustrates some of the popular delusions on the 
subject. He speaks (pp. 9, 11, 23) of Kentucky as containing "nearly 
pure English blood, mainly derived through the old Dominion, and 
altogether from districts that shared the Virginian conditions." As 
much of the blood was Pennsylvanian or North Carolinian, his last 
sentence means nothing, unless all the "districts" outside of New Eng- 
land are held to have shared the Virginian conditions. Turning to 
Marshall (I, 441) we see that in 1780 about half the people were from 
Virginia, Pennsylvania furnishing the next greatest number; and of 
the Virginians most were from a population much more like that of 
Pennsylvania than like that of "tide-water" Virginia; as we learn 
from twenty sources, such as Waddell's "Annals of Augusta County." 
Mr. Shaler speaks of the Huguenots and of the Scotch immigrants, 
who came over after 1745 ; but actually makes no mention of the 
Presbyterian Irish or Scotch-Irish, much the most important element 
in all the West; in fact, on p. 10, he impliedly excludes any such 
immigration at all. He greatly underestimates the German element, 
which was important in West Virginia. He sums up by stating that 
the Kentuckians come from the "truly British people," quite a differ- 
ent thing from his statement that they are "English." 

The "truly British people" consists of a conglomerate of as distinct 
races as exist anywhere in Aryan Europe. The Erse, Welsh, and 
Gaelic immigrants to America are just as distinct from the English, 
just as "foreign" to them, as are the Scandinavians, Germans, Hol- 
landers, and Huguenots — often more so. Such early families as the 
Welsh Shelbys, and Gaelic McAfees are no more English than are the 
Huguenot Seviers or the German Stoners. Even including merely 
the immigrants from the British Isles, the very fact that the Welsh, 
Irish, and Scotch, in a few generations, fuse with the English instead 
of each element remaining separate, makes the American population 
widely different from that of Britain ; exactly as a fiask of water is 
different from two cans of hydrogen and oxygen gas. Mr. Shaler 
also seems inclined to look down a little on the Tennesseeans, and to 
consider their population as composed in part of inferior elements ; 
but in reality, though there are very marked differences between the 
two commonwealths of Kentucky and Tennessee, yet they resemble one 
another more closely, in blood and manners, than either does any other 
American State ; and both have too just cause for pride to make it 
necessary for either to sneer at the other, or, indeed, at any State of 
our mighty Federal Union. In their origin they were precisely alike; 
but whereas the original pioneers, the hunters and Indian fighters, 
kept possession of Tennessee as long as they lived — Jackson, at Sevier's 
death, taking the latter's place with even more than his power — in 
Kentucky, on the other hand, after twenty years' rule, the first set- 



no THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tiers were swamped by the great inrush of immigration, and with the 
defeat of Logan for governor the control passed into the hands of the 
same class of men that then ruled Virginia. After that date the "tide- 
water" stock assumed an importance in Kentucky it never had in 
Tennessee; and, of course, the influence of the Scotch-Irish blood was 
greatly diminished. 

Mr. Shaler's error is trivial compared to that made by another and 
even more brilliant writer. In the "History of the People of the 
United States," by Professor McMaster (New York, 1887), p. 70, 
there is a mistake so glaring that it would not need notice, were it 
not for the many excellences and wide repute of Professor McMaster's 
book. He says that of the immigrants to Kentucky, most had come 
"from the neighboring States of Carolina and Georgia," and shows 
that this is not a mere slip of the pen, by elaborating the statement 
in the following paragraphs, again speaking of North and South 
Carolina and Georgia as furnishing the colonists to Kentucky. This 
shows a complete misapprehension not only of the feeding-grounds of 
the Western emigration, but of the routes it followed, and of the con- 
ditions of the Southern States. South Carolina furnished very few 
emigrants to Kentucky, and Georgia practically none ; combined, they 
probably did not furnish as many as New Jersey or Maryland. Georgia 
was herself a frontier community; she received instead of sending out 
immigrants. The bulk of the South Carolina emigration went to 
Georgia. 



CHAPTER VI 

BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS; AND THEIR HUNTING 
IN NO-MAN'S LAND 

I 769-1 774 

THE American backwoodsmen had surged up, wave upon 
wave, till their mass trembled in the troughs of the 
Alleghanies, ready to flood the continent beyond. The 
peoples threatened by them were dimly conscious of the 
danger which as yet only loomed in the distance. Far off, 
among their quiet adobe villages, in the sun-scorched lands 
by the Rio Grande, the slow Indo-Iberian peons and their 
monkish masters still walked in the tranquil steps of their 
fathers, ignorant of the growth of the power that was to 
overwhelm their children and successors ; but nearer by, Span- 
iard and Creole Frenchman, Algonquin, and Appalachians 
were all uneasy as they began to feel the first faint pressure 
of the American advance. 

As yet they had been shielded by the forest which lay 
over the land like an unrent mantle. All through the moun- 
tains, and far beyond, it stretched without a break ; but to- 
ward the mouth of the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers the 
landscape became varied with open groves of woodland, 
with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of 
long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, 
was the debatable ground between the Northern and the 
Southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein/ but both 

*This is true as a whole; but along the Mississippi, in the extreme west 
of the present Kentucky and Tennessee, the Chickasaws held possession. 
There was a Shawnee town south of the Ohio, and Cherokee villages in 
southeastern Tennessee. 

Ill 



112 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

used it as their hunting-grounds; and it was traversed from 
end to end by the well-marked war traces^ which they fol- 
lowed when they invaded each other's territory. The whites, 
on trying to break through the barrier which hemmed them 
in from the Western lands, naturally succeeded best when 
pressing along the line of least resistance ; and so their first 
great advance was made in this debatable land, where the 
uncertainly defined hunting-grounds of the Cherokee, Creek, 
and Chickasaw marched upon those of Northern Algonquin 
and Wyandot. 

Unknown and unnamed hunters and Indian traders had 
from time to time pushed some little way into the wilderness; 
and they had been followed by others of whom we do indeed 
know the names, but little more. One explorer had found 
and named the Cumberland river and mountains, and the 
great pass called Cumberland Gap.- Others had gone far 
beyond the utmost limits this man had reached, and had 
hunted in the great bend of the Cumberland and in the wood- 
land region of Kentucky, famed amongst the Indians for the 
abundance of the game.^ But their accounts excited no more 

* The backwoodsmen generally used "trace," where Western frontiers- 
men would now say "trail." 

* Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia. He named them after the Duke of 
Cumberland. Walker was a genuine explorer and surveyor, a man of 
mark as a pioneer. The journal of his trip across the Cumberland to the 
headwaters of the Kentucky in 1750 has been preserved, and has just 
been published by William Cabell Rives (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.). 
It is very interesting, and Mr. Rives has done a real service in pul)lishing 
it. Walker and live companions were absent six months. He found traces 
of earlier wanderers— proliably hunters. One of his companions was 
bitten by a bear; three of the dogs were wounded by bears, and one killed 
by an elk; the horses were frequently bitten by rattlesnakes; once a bull 
buffalo threatened the whole party. They killed 13 buffaloes, 8 elks, 
53 bears, 20 deer, 150 turkeys, and some other game. 

' flunters and Indian traders visited portions of Kentucky and Tennessee 
years before the country became generally known even on the border. 
(Not to speak of the French, who had long known something of the 
country, where they had even made trading-posts and built furnaces, as 
sec liaywood, etc.) We know the names of a few. Those who went 
down the Ohio, merely landing on the Kentucky shore, do not deserve 
mention ; the French had done as much for a century. Whites who had 
been captured l)y the Indians were sometimes taken through Tennessee or 
Kentucky, as John Sailing in 1730, and Mrs. Mary Inglis in 1756 (see 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 113 

than a passing interest ; they came and went without comment, 
as lonely stragglers had come and gone for nearly a century. 
The backwoods civilization crept slowly westward without 
being influenced in its movements by their explorations.^ 

Finally, however, among these hunters one arose whose 
wanderings were to bear fruit, who was destined to lead 
through the wilderness the first body of settlers that ever es- 
tablished a community in the far West, completely cut off 
from the seaboard colonies. This was Daniel Boone. He 
was born in Pennsylvania in 1734," but when only a boy 
had been brought with the rest of his family to the banks of 
the Yadkin in North Carolina. Here he grew up, and as soon 
as he came of age he married, built a log hut, and made a 
clearing, whereon to farm like the rest of his backwoods neigh- 
bors. They all tilled their own clearings, guiding the plough 
among the charred stumps left when the trees were chopped 

"Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," Collins, etc.). In 1654, a certain Colonel 
Wood was in Kentucky. The next real explorer was nearly a century 
later, though Doherty in 1690, and Adair in 1730, traded with the Cher- 
okees in what is now Tennessee. Walker struck the headwaters of the 
Kentucky in 1750; he had been to the Cumberland in 1748. He made other 
exploring trips. Christopher Gist went up the Kentucky in 1751. In 1756 
and 1758, Forts Loudon and Chissel were built on the Tennessee head- 
waters, but were soon after destroyed by the Cherokees. In 1761, '62, '63, 
and for a year or two afterward, a party of hunters, under the lead of 
one Wallen, hunted on the Western waters, going continually farther west. 
In 1765, Croghan made a sketch of the Ohio River. In 1766, James Smith 
and others explored Tennessee. Stoner, Harrod, and Lindsay, and a 
party from South Carolina were near the present site of Nashville in 
1767; in the same year John Finley and others were in Kentucky; and it 
was Finley who first told Boone about it and led him thither. 

^The attempt to find out the names of the men who first saw the dif- 
ferent portions of the Western country is not very profitable. The first 
visitors were hunters, simply wandering in search of game, not with any 
settled purpose of exploration. Who the individual first comers were has 
generally been forgotten. At the most it is only possible to find out the 
name of some one of several who went to a given locality. The hunters 
were wandering everywhere. By chance, some went to places we now 
consider important. By chance, the names of a few of these have been 
preserved. But the credit belongs to the whole backwoods race, not to the 
individual backwoodsman. 

^August 22, 1734 (according to James Parton, in his sketch of Boone). 
His grandfather was an English immigrant ; his father had married a 
Quakeress. When he lived on the banks of the Delaware, the country 
was still a wilderness. He was born in Berks Co. 



114 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

down and the land burned over, and they were all, as a matter 
of course, hunters. With Boone, hunting- and exploration 
were passions, and the lonely life of the wilderness, with its 
bold, wild freedom, the only existence for which he really 
cared, lie was a tall, spare, sinewy man, with eyes like 
an eagle's, and muscles that never tired; the toil and hard- 
ship of his life made no impress on his iron frame, unhurt 
by intemperance of any kind, and he lived for eighty-six years, 
a backwoods hunter to the end of his days. His thoughtful, 
quiet, pleasant face, so often portrayed, is familiar to every 
one; it was the face of a man who never blustered nor bullied, 
who would neither inflict nor suffer any wrong, and who had 
a limitless fund of fortitude, endurance, and indomitable res- 
olution upon which to draw when fortune proved adverse. 
His self-command and patience, his daring, restless love of 
adventure, and, in time of danger, his absolute trust in his 
own powers and resources, all combined to render him pecu- 
liarly fitted to follow the career of which he was so fond. 
Boone hunted on the Western waters at an early date. In 
the valley of Boone's Creek, a tributary of the Watauga, 
there is a beech-tree still standing, on which can be faintly 
traced an inscription setting forth that "D. Boon cilled a bar 
on [this] tree in the year 1760."^ On the expeditions of 
which this is the earliest record he was partly hunting on his 
own account, and partly exploring on behalf of another, 
Richard Henderson. Henderson was a prominent citizen of 
North Carolina,- a speculative man of great ambition and 
energy. He stood high in the colony, was extravagant and 
fond of display, and his fortune being jeopardized, he hoped 

* The inscription is first mentioned by Ramsey, p. 67. A letter from the 
Hon. John Allison, at present (1888) Secretary of State for Tennessee, 
goes to prove that the inscription has been on the tree as long as the dis- 
trict has been settled. Of course, it cannot be proved that the inscription 
is by P.oonc; but there is much reason for supposing that such is the case, 
and little for doubting it. 

'lie was by liirtii a Virginian, of mixed Scotch and Welsh descent. 
See Collins, II, 336; also Ramsey. For Boone's early connection with 
Henderson, in 1764, see Haywood, 35. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 115 

to more than retrieve it by going into speculation in Western 
lands on an unheard-of scale; for he intended to try to estab- 
lish on his own account a great proprietary colony beyond 
the mountains. He had great confidence in Boone ; and it 
was his backing which enabled the latter to turn his discov- 
eries to such good account. 

Boone's claim to distinction rests not so much on his wide 
wanderings in unknown lands, for in this respect he did 
little more than was done by a hundred other backwoods 
hunters of his generation, but on the fact that he was able 
to turn his daring woodcraft to the advantage of his fellows. 
As he himself said, he was an instrument "ordained of God to 
settle the wilderness." He inspired confidence in all who 
met him,^ so that the men of means and influence were will- 
ing to trust adventurous enterprises to his care; and his 
success as an explorer, his skill as a hunter, and his prowess as 
an Indian fighter, enabled him to bring these enterprises to 
a successful conclusion, and in some degree to control the 
wild spirits associated with him. 

Boone's expeditions into the edges of the wilderness whetted 
his appetite for the unknown. He had heard of great hunt- 
ing-grounds in the far interior from a stray hunter and 
Indian trader,- who had himself seen them, and on May i, 
1769, he left his home on the Yadkin "to wander through 
the wilderness of America in quest of the country of Ken- 
tucky." ^ He was accompanied by five other men, including 
his informant, and struck out toward the Northwest, through 

^ Even among his foes ; he is almost the only American praised by 
Lt.-Gov. Henry Hamilton of Detroit, for instance (see Royal Gazette, 
July 15, 1780). 

* John Finley. 

^ "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, formerly a hunter" ; nom- 
inally written by Boone himself, in 1784, but in reality by John Filson, the 
first Kentucky historian — a man who did history a good service, albeit a 
true sample of the small hedge-school pedant. The old pioneer's own 
language would have been far better than that which Filson used ; for the 
latter's composition is a travesty of Johnsonese in its most aggravated 
form. For Filson see Durrett's admirable "Life" in the Filson Club 
Publications. 



ii6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the tangled mass of rugged mountains and gloomy forests. 
During five weeks of severe toil the little band journeyed 
through vast solitudes, whose utter loneliness can with diffi- 
culty be understood by those who have not themselves dwelt 
and hunted in primeval mountain forests. Then, early in 
June, the adventurers broke through the interminable wastes 
of dim woodland, and stood on the threshold of the beautiful 
blue-grass region of Kentucky; a land of running waters, 
of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches 
of lofty forest. It was teeming with game. The shaggy- 
maned herds of unwieldy buffalo — the bison, as they should 
be called — had beaten out broad roads through the forests, 
and had furrowed the prairies with trails along which they 
had travelled for countless generations. The round-horned 
elk, with spreading, massive antlers, the lordliest of the deer 
tribe throughout the world, abounded, and like the buffalo 
travelled in bands not only through the woods but also across 
the reaches of waving grass-land. The deer were extraor- 
dinarily numerous, and so were bears, while wolves and pan- 
thers were plentiful. Wherever there was a salt-spring the 
country was fairly thronged with wild beasts of many kinds. 
For six months Boone and his companions enjoyed such 
hunting as had hardly fallen to men of their race since the 
Germans came out of the Hercynian forest.^ 

*The "Nieblung Lied" tells of Siegfried's feats with bear, buffalo, elk, 
wolf, and deer: 

"Danach schlug er wieder einen Biiffel und einen Elk 
Vicr starkcs .\uer nieder und einen grimmen Schelk, 
So schncll trug ihn die Miihre, dasz ihm nichts entsprang; 
Hinden und Hirsche wurden viele sein Fang. 

• _ cin Waldthier fiirchterlich, 

Einen wildcn Barcn." 

Siegfried's elk was our moose; and, like the Ameriran frontiersmen of 
to-day, the old German singer calls the Wisent or bison a buffalo- 
European sportsmen now committing an equally bad blunder by giving it 
the name of the extinct aurochs. Re it observed also that the hard- 
fightmg, hard-drinking, boastful hero of Nieblung fame used a "spiir 
hund" just as his representative of Kentucky or Tennessee used a track- 
hound a thousand years later. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 117 

In December, however, they were attacked by Indians. 
Boone and a companion were captured ; and when they escaped 
they found their camp broken up, and the rest of the party 
scattered and gone home. About this time they were joined 
by Squire Boone, the brother of the great hunter, and him- 
self a woodsman of but Httle less skill, together with an- 
other adventurer; the two had travelled through the immense 
wilderness, partly to explore it and partly with the hope of 
finding the original adventurers, which they finally succeeded 
in doing more by good luck than design. Soon afterward 
Boone's companion in his first short captivity was again 
surprised by the Indians, and this time was slain ^ — the first 
of the thousands of human beings with whose life-blood 
Kentucky was bought. The attack was entirely unprovoked. 
The Indians had wantonly shed the first blood. The land 
belonged to no one tribe, but was hunted over by all, each 
feeling jealous of every other intruder; they attacked the 
whites, not because the whites had wronged them, but be- 
cause their invariable policy was to kill any strangers on 
any grounds over which they themselves ever hunted, no 
matter what man had the best rights thereto. The Kentucky 
hunters were promptly taught that in this No-man's land, 
teeming with game and lacking even a solitary human habi- 
tation, every Indian must be regarded as a foe. 

The man who had accompanied Squire Boone was terrified 
by the presence of the Indians, and now returned to the set- 
tlements. The two brothers remained alone on their hunting- 
grounds throughout the winter, living in a little cabin. About 
the 1st of May Squire set off alone to the settlements to 
procure horses and ammunition. For three months Daniel 
Boone remained absolutely alone in the wilderness, without 
salt, sugar, or flour, and without the companionship of so 
much as a horse or a dog.^ But the solitude-loving hunter, 

* His name was John Stewart. 
His remaining absolutely alone in the wilderness for such a length of 
time is often spoken of with wonder ; but here again Boone stands merely 
as the backwoods type, not as an exception. To this day many hunters in 



Ii8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

dauntless and self-reliant, enjoyed to the full his wild, lonely 
life; he passed his days hunting and exploring, wandering 
hither and thither over the country, while at night he lay off 
in the cane-brake or thickets, without a fire, so as not to 
attract the Indians, Of the latter he saw many signs, and 
they sometimes came into his camp, but his sleepless wariness 
enabled him to avoid capture. 

Late in July his brother returned, and met him according 
to appointment at the old camp. Other hunters also now 
came into the Kentucky wilderness, and Boone joined a small 
party of them for a short time. Such a party of hunters is 
always glad to have anything wherewith to break the irksome 
monotony of the long evenings passed round the camp-fire; 
and a book or a greasy pack of cards was as welcome in a 
camp of Kentucky riflemen in 1770 as it is to a party of 
Rocky Mountain hunters in 1888. Boone has recorded in 
his own quaint phraseology an incident of his life during this 
summer, which shows how eagerly such a little band of fron- 
tiersmen read a book, and how real its characters became to 
their minds. He was encamped with five other men on Red 
River, and they had with them for their "amusement the 
history of Samuel Gulliver's travels, wherein he gave an 
account of his young master, Glundelick, careing [sic] him 
on a market day for a show to a town called Lulbegrud." In 
the party who, amid such strange surroundings, read and 
listened to Dean Swift's writings was a young man named 
Alexander Neely. One night he came into camp with two 
Indian scalps, taken from a Shawnee village he had found 
on a creek running into the river; and he announced to the 
circle of grim wilderness veterans that "he had been that day 
to Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their cap- 

the Rockies do the same. In 1880, two men whom I knew wintered to the 
west of the Bighorns, 150 miles from any human beings. They had salt 
and flour, however ; but tliey were nine months without seeing a white 
face. They killed elk, buflFalo, and a moose; and had a narrow escape 
from a small Indian war-party. Last winter (1887-88) an old trapper, 
a friend of mine in the days when he hunted buffalo, spent five months 
entirely alone in the mountains north of the Flathead country. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 119 

ital." To this day the creek by which the two luckless Shaw- 
nees lost their lives is known as Lulbegrud Creek. ^ 

Soon after this encounter the increasing danger from the 
Indians drove Boone back to the valley of the Cumberland 
River, and, in the spring of 1771, he returned to his home on 
the Yadkin. 

A couple of years before Boone went to Kentucky, Stein- 
er, or Stoner, and Harrod, two hunters from Pittsburg, who 
had passed through the Illinois, came down to hunt in the 
bend of the Cumberland, where Nashville now stands; they 
found vast numbers of buffalo, and killed a great many, 
especially around the licks, where the huge clumsy beasts had 
fairly destroyed most of the forest, treading down the young 
trees and bushes till the ground was left bare or covered with 
a rich growth of clover. The bottoms and the hollows be- 
tween the hills were thickset with cane. Sycamore grew in 
the low ground, and toward the Mississippi were to be found 
the persimmon and cottonwood. Sometimes the forest was 
open and composed of huge trees; elsewhere it was of thicker, 
smaller growth.- Everywhere game abounded, and it was 
nowhere very wary. 

Other hunters, of whom we know even the names of only 
a few, had been through many parts of the wilderness before 

* Deposition of Daniel Boone, September 15, 1796. Certified copy from 
Deposition Book No. i, page 156, Clark County Court, Ky. First pub- 
lished by Colonel John Mason Brown, in "Battle of the Blue Licks," p. 40 
(Frankfort, 1882). The book which these old hunters read around their 
camp-fire in the Indian-haunted primeval forest a century and a quarter 
ago has by great good luck been preserved, and is in Colonel Durrett's 
library at Louisville. It is entitled the "Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, 
London, MDCCLXV," and is in two small volumes. On the title-page 
is written "A. Neelly, 1770." 

Frontiersmen are often content with the merest printed trash ; but the 
better men among them appreciate really good literature quite as much 
as any other class of people. In the long winter evenings they study to 
good purpose books as varied as Dante, Josephus, Macaulay, Longfellow, 
Barton's "Life of Jackson," and the Rollo stories — to mention only vol- 
umes that have been especial favorites with my own cowboys and hunters. 

*MS. diary of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796. Preserved in Nashville His- 
torical Society. In 1796, bufifalo were scarce; but some fresh signs of 
them were still seen at licks. 



120 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Boone, and earlier still Frenchmen had built forts and smelt- 
ing-furnaces on the Cumberland, the Tennessee,^ and the 
head tributaries of the Kentucky. Boone is interesting as a 
leader and explorer; but he is still more interesting as a 
type. The West was neither discovered, won, nor setded by 
any single man. No keen-eyed statesman planned the move- 
ment, nor was it carried out by any great military leader; it 
was the work of a whole people, of whom each man was im- 
pelled mainly by sheer love of adventure; it was the outcome 
of the ceaseless strivings of all the dauntless, restless back- 
woods folk to win homes for their descendants and to each 
penetrate deeper than his neighbors into the remote forest 
hunting-grounds where the perilous pleasures of the chase 
and of war could be best enjoyed. We owe the conquest of 
the West to all the backwoodsmen, not to any solitary indi- 
vidual among them; where all alike were strong and daring 
there was no chance for any single man to rise to unquestioned 
pre-eminence. 

In the summer of 1769 a large band of hunters- crossed 
the mountains to make a long hunt in the Western wilderness, 
the men clad in hunting-shirts, moccasins, and leggings, with 
traps, rifles, and dogs, and each bringing with him two or 
three horses. They made their way over the mountains, 
forded or swam the rapid, timber-choked streams, and went 
down the Cumberland, till at last they broke out of the forest 
and came upon great barrens of tall grass. One of their 
number was killed by a small party of Indians ; but they saw 
no signs of human habitations. Yet they came across mounds 

* Haywood, p. 75, etc. It is a waste of time to quarrel over who first 
discovered a particular tract of this wilderness. A great many hunters 
traversed different parts at different times, from 1760 on. each practically 
exploring on his own account. We do not know the names of most of 
them ; those we do know are only worth preserving in county histories 
and the like ; the credit belongs to the race, not the individual. 

' From twenty to forty. Compare Haywood and Marshall, both of 
whom are speaking of the same bodies of men ; Ramsey makes the mis- 
take of supposing they are speaking of different parties ; Haywood dwells 
on the feats of those who descended the Cumberland; Marshall of those 
who went to Kentucky. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 121 

and graves and other remains of an ancient people who had 
once hved in the land, but had died out of it long ages before 
the incoming of the white men.^ 

The hunters made a permanent camp in one place, and 
returned to it at intervals to deposit their skins and peltries. 
Between times they scattered out singly or in small bands. 
They hunted all through the year, killing vast quantities of 
every kind of game. Most of it they got by fair still-hunting, 
but some by methods we do not now consider legitimate, such 
as calling up a doe by imitating the bleat of a fawn, and shoot- 
ing deer from a scaffold when they came to the salt-licks at 
night. Nevertheless, most of the hunters did not approve of 
"crusting" the game — that is, of running it down on snow- 
shoes in the deep midwinter snows. 

At the end of the year some of the adventurers returned 
home; others went north into the Kentucky country,- where 
they hunted for several months before recrossing the moun- 
tains ; while the remainder, led by an old hunter named Kasper 
Mansker,^ built two boats and hollowed out of logs two 
pirogues or dugouts — clumsier but tougher craft than the 
light birch-bark canoes — and started down the Cumberland. 
At the French Lick, where Nashville now stands, they saw 
enormous quantities of buffalo, elk, and other game, more 
than they had ever seen before in any one place. Some of 
their goods were taken by a party of Indians they met, but 
some French traders whom they likewise encountered, treated 
them well and gave them salt, flour, tobacco, and taffia, the 
last being especially prized, as they had had no spirits for a 
year. They went down to Natchez, sold their furs, hides, 
oil, and tallow, and some returned by sea while others, in- 
cluding Mansker, came overland with a drove of horses that 
was being taken through the Indian nations to Georgia. From 

_ ^ The so-called mound-builders ; now generally considered to have been 
simply the ancestors of the present Indian races. 

* Led by one James Knox. 

' His real name was Kasper Mansker, as his signature shows, but he 
was always spoken of as Mansco. 



122 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the length of time all these men, as well as Boone and his 
companions, were absent, they were known as the Long Hunt- 
ers,^ and the fame of their hunting and exploring spread all 
along the border and greatly excited the young men. 

In 1 77 1, many hunters crossed over the mountains and 
penetrated far into the wilderness, to work huge havoc among 
the herds of game. Some of them came in bands, and others 
singly, and many of the mountains, lakes, rivers, and creeks 
of Tennessee are either called after the leaders among these 
old hunters and wanderers, or else by their names perpetuate 
the memory of some incident of their hunting trips. - 

Mansker himself came back, a leader among his comrades, 
and hunted many years in the woods alone or with others of 
his kind, and saw and did many strange things. One winter 
he and those who were with him built a skin-house from the 
hides of game, and when their ammunition gave .out they left 
three of their number and all their dogs at the skin-house and 
went to the settlements for powder and lead. When they 
returned they found that two of the men had been killed and 
the other chased away by the Indians, who, however, had not 
found the camp. The dogs, having seen no human face for 
three months, were very wild, yet in a few days became as 
tame and well-trained as ever. They killed such enormous 
quantities of buffalo, elk, and especially deer, that they could 
not pack the hides into camp, and one of the party, during an 
idle moment and in a spirit of protest against fate,^ carved 
on the peeled trunk of a fallen poplar, where 'it long remained, 
the sentence : "2300 deer skins lost ; ruination by God !" The 
soul of this thrift V hunter must have been further errieved 
when a party of Cherokees visited their camp and took away 
all the camp utensils and five hundred hides. The whites 

nicAfee MSS. ("Autobiography of Robert McAfee"). Sometimes the 
term "Long Hunters" was used as including Boone, Finley, and their 
companions, sometimes not; in the McAfee MSS. it is explicitly used in 
the former sense. 

*See Haywood for Clinch River, Drake's Pond, Mansco's Lick, Greasy 
Rock, etc. 

'A hunter named Bledsoe. Collins, H, 418. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 123 

found the broad track they made in coming in, but could not 
find where they had gone out, each wily redskin then covering 
his own trail, and the whole number apparently breaking up 
into several parties. 

Sometimes the Indians not only plundered the hunting- 
camps, but killed the hunters as well, and the hunters retali- 
ated in kind. Often the white men and red fought one another 
whenever they met, and displayed in their conflicts all the 
cunning and merciless ferocity that made forest warfare so 
dreadful. Terrible deeds of prowess were done by the mighty 
men on either side. It was a war of stealth and cruelty, and 
ceaseless, sleepless watchfulness. The contestants had sinewy 
frames and iron wills, keen eyes and steady hands, hearts as 
bold as they were ruthless. Their moccasined feet made no 
sound as they stole softly on the camp of a sleeping enemy or 
crept to ambush while he himself still-hunted or waylaid the 
deer. A favorite stratagem was to imitate the call of game, 
especially the gobble of the wild turkey, and thus to lure the 
would-be hunter to his fate. If the deceit was guessed at, the 
caller was himself stalked. The men grew wonderfully expert 
in detecting imitation. One old hunter, Castleman by name, 
was in after-years fond of describing how an Indian nearly 
lured him to death. It was in the dusk of the evening, when 
he heard the cries of two great wood-owls near him. Listen- 
ing attentively, he became convinced that all was not right. 
"The woo-woo call and the woo-woo answer were not well 
timed and toned, and the babel-chatter was a failure. More 
than this, they seemed to be on the ground." Creeping cau- 
tiously up, and peering through the brush, he saw something 
the height of a stump between two forked trees. It did not 
look natural ; he aimed, pulled trigger, and killed an Indian. 

Each party of Indians or whites was ever on the watch to 
guard against danger or to get the chance of taking vengeance 
for former wrongs. The dark woods saw a myriad lonely 
fights where red warrior or white hunter fell and no friend 
of the fallen ever knew his fate, where his sole memorial was 



124 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the scalp that hung in the smoky cabin or squaHd wigwam of 
the victor. 

The rude and fragmentary annals of the frontier are filled 
with the deeds of men, of whom Mansker can be taken as a 
type. He was a wonderful marksman and woodsman, and 
was afterward made a colonel of the frontier militia, though, 
being of German descent, he spoke only broken English.^ Like 
most of the hunters he became specially proud of his rifle, 
calling it "Nancy" ; for they were very apt to know each his 
favorite weapon by some homely or endearing nickname. 
Every forest sight or sound was familiar to him. He knew 
the cries of the birds and beasts so well that no imitation 
could deceive him. Once he was nearly taken in by an un- 
usually perfect imitation of a wild gobbler; but he finally 
became suspicious, and "placed" his adversary behind a large 
tree. Having perfect confidence in his rifle, and knowing that 
the Indians rarely fired except at close range — partly because 
they were poor shots, partly because they loaded their guns 
too lightly — he made no attempt to hide. Feigning to pass 
to the Indian's right, the latter, as he expected, tried to follow 
him ; reaching an opening in a glade, Mansker suddenly 
wheeled and killed his foe. When hunting he made his home 
sometimes in a hollow tree, sometimes in a hut of buffalo- 
hides ; for the buffalo were so plenty that once when a lick 
was discovered by himself and a companion,^ the latter, though 
on horseback, was nearly trampled to death by the mad rush 
of a herd they surprised and stampeded. 

He was a famous Indian fighter; one of the earliest of his 
recorded deeds has to do with an Indian adventure. He and 
three other men were trapping on Sulphur Fork and Red 
River, in the great bend of the Cumberland. Moving their 
camp, they came on recent traces of Indians : deer carcasses 
and wicker frames for stretching hides. They feared to 
tarry longer unless they knew something of their foes, and 

* Carr's "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," pp. 52, 54, 56, etc. 
*Tlic hnntcr Bledsoe mentioned in a previous note. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 125 

Mansker set forth to explore, and turned toward Red River, 
where, from the sign, he thought to find the camp. Travel- 
Hng some twenty miles, he perceived by the sycamore-trees in 
view that he was near the river. Advancing a few steps far- 
ther he suddenly found himself within eighty or ninety yards 
of the camp. He instantly slipped behind a tree to watch. 
There were only two Indians in camp; the rest he supposed 
were hunting at a distance. Just as he was about to retire, 
one of the Indians took up a tomahawk and strolled off in 
the opposite direction ; while the other picked up his gun, put 
it on his shoulder, and walked directly toward Mansker's hid- 
ing-place. Mansker lay close, hoping that he would not be 
noticed ; but the Indian advanced directly toward him until 
not fifteen paces off. There being no alternative, Mansker 
cocked his piece, and shot the Indian through the body. The 
Indian screamed, threw down his gun, and ran toward camp; 
passing it he pitched headlong down the bluff, dead, into the 
river. The other likewise ran to camp at the sound of the 
shot; but Mansker outran him, reached the camp first, and 
picked up an old gun that was on the ground; but the gun 
would not go off, and the Indian turned and escaped. Mansker 
broke the old gun, and returned speedily to his comrades. 
The next day they all went to the spot, where they found the 
dead Indian and took away his tomahawk, knife, and bullet 
bag; but they never found his gun. The other Indian had 
come back, had loaded his horses with furs, and was gone. 
They followed him all that day and all night with a torch of 
dry cane, and could never overtake him. Finding that there 
were other bands of Indians about, they then left their hunt- 
ing-grounds. Toward the close of his life eld Mansker, like 
many another fearless and ignorant backwoods fighter, be- 
came so much impressed by the fiery earnestness and zeal of 
the Methodists that he joined himself to them, and became a 
strong and helpful prop of the community whose first founda- 
tions he had helped to lay. 

Sometimes the hunters met creoIe trappers, who sent their 



126 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tallow, hides, and furs in pirogues and bateaux down the 
Mississippi to Natchez or Orleans, instead of having to trans- 
port them on pack-horses through the perilous forest tracks 
across the mountains. They had to encounter dangers from 
beasts as well as men. More than once we hear of one who, 
in a cane-break or tangled thicket, was mangled to death by 
the horns and hoofs of a wounded buffalo.^ All of the wild 
beasts were then comparatively unused to contact with rifle- 
bearing hunters ; they were, in consequence, much more fero- 
cious and ready to attack man than at present. The bear were 
the most numerous of all, after the deer; their chase was a 
favorite sport. There was just enough danger in it to make 
it exciting, for though hunters were frequently bitten or 
clawed, they were hardly ever killed. The wolves were gen- 
erally very wary; yet in rare instances they, too, were danger- 
ous. The panther was a much more dreaded foe, and lives 
were sometimes lost in hunting him ; but even with the pan- 
ther, the cases where the hunter was killed were very 
exceptional. 

The hunters were in their lives sometimes clean and straight, 
and sometimes immoral, with a gross and uncouth vicious- 
ness. We read of one party of six men and a woman, who 
were encountered on the Cumberland River ; the woman acted 
as the wife of a man named Big John, but deserted him for one 
of his companions, and when he fell sick persuaded the whole 
party to leave him in the wilderness to die of disease and starv- 
ation. Yet those who left him did not in the end fare better, 
for they were ambushed and cut off, when they had gone down 
to Natchez, apparently by Indians. 

At first the hunters, with their small-bore rifles, were un- 
successful in killing buffalo. Once, when George Rogers 
Clark had long resided in Kentucky, he and two companions 
discovered a camp of some forty newcomers actually starv- 
ing, though buffalo were plenty. Clark and his friends speed- 
ily relieved their necessities by killing fourteen of the great 
*As Haywood, 8i. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 127 

beasts ; for when once the hunters had found out the knack, 
the buffalo were easier slaughtered than any other game.^ 

The hunters were the pioneers; but close behind them came 
another set of explorers quite as hardy and resolute. These 
were the surveyors. The men of chain and compass played 
a part in the exploration of the West scarcely inferior to that 
of the heroes of axe and rifle. Often, indeed, the parts were 
combined; Boone himself was a surveyor,- Vast tracts of 
Western land were continually being allotted either to actual 
settlers or as bounties to soldiers who had served against the 
French and Indians. These had to be explored and mapped, 
and as there was much risk as well as reward in the task it 
naturally proved attractive to all adventurous young men who 
had some education, a good deal of ambition, and not too 
much fortune. A great number of young men of good fami- 
lies, like Washington and Clark, went into the business. Soon 
after the return of Boone and the Long Hunters, parties of 
surveyors came down the Ohio,^ mapping out its course and 
exploring the Kentucky lands that lay beside it.* 

Among the hunters, surveyors, and explorers who came 
into the wilderness in 1773 was a band led by three young 
men named McAfee — typical backwoodsmen, hardy, adven- 
turous, their frontier recklessness and license tempered by the 
Calvinism they had learned in their rough log home. They 
were fond of hunting, but they came to spy out the land and 
see if it could be made into homes for their children; and in 
their party were several surveyors. They descended the Ohio 

* This continued to be the case until the buffalo were all destroyed. 
When my cattle came to the Little Missouri in 1882, buffalo were plenty; 
my men killed nearly a hundred that winter, though tending the cattle; 
yet an inexperienced hunter not far from us, though a hardy plainsman, 
killed only three in the whole time. See also Parkman's "Oregon Trail" 
for an instance of a party of Missouri backwoodsmen who made a char- 
acteristic failure in an attempt on a bufifalo band. 

" See Note B. 

' An English engineer made a rude survey or table of distances of the 
Ohio in 1766. 

* Collins states that in 1770 and 1772 Washington surveyed small tracts 
in what is now northeastern Kentucky; but this is more than doubtful. 



128 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

in dugout canoes, with their rifles, blankets, tomahawks, and 
jfishing-tackle. They met some Shawnees and got on well 
with them; but while their leader was visiting the chief. Corn- 
stalk, and listening to his fair speeches at his town of old 
Chillicothe, the rest of the party were startled to see a band 
of young Shawnee braves returning from a successful foray 
on the settlements, driving before them the laden pack-horses 
they had stolen.^ 

They explored part of Kentucky, and visited the different 
licks. One, long named Big Bone Lick, was famous because 
there were scattered about it in incredible quantity the gigantic 
remains of the extinct mastodon ; the McAfees made a tent 
by stretching their blankets over the huge fossil ribs, and used 
the disjointed vertebrae as stools on which to sit. Game of 
many kinds thronged the spaces round the licks; herds of buf- 
falo, elk, and deer, as well as bears and wolves, were all in 
sight at once. The ground roundabout some of them was 
trodden down so that there was not as much grass left as 
would feed a sheep ; and the game trails were like streets, or 
the beaten roads round a city. A little village to this day 
recalls by its name the fact that it stands on a former "stamp- 
ing-ground" of the buffalo. At one lick the explorers met 
with what might have proved a serious adventure. One of 
the McAfees and a companion were passing round its out- 
skirts, when some others of the party fired at a gang of buffa- 
loes, which stampeded directly toward the two. While his 
companion scampered up a leaning mulberry-bush, McAfee, 
less agile, leaped behind a tree trunk, where he stood side- 
ways till the buffalo passed, their horns scraping off the bark 
on either side ; then he looked round to see his friend "hang- 
ing in the mulberry-bush like a coon." ^ 

\\'hen the party left this lick they followed a buffalo trail, 

* All of this is taken from the McAfee MSS., in Colonel Durrett's 
lil)rary. 

'McAfee MSS. A similar adventure befell my brother Elliott and my 
cousin John Roosevelt while they were hunting buflFalo on the staked 
plains of Texas in 1877. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 129 

beaten out in the forest, "the size of the wagon road leading 
out of Williamsburg," then the capital of Virginia. It crossed 
the Kentucky River at a riffle below where Frankfort now 
stands. Thence they started homeward across the Cumber- 
land Mountains, and suffered terribly while making their way 
through the "desolate and voiceless solitudes"; mere wastes 
of cliffs, crags, caverns, and steep hillsides covered with pine, 
laurel, and underbrush. Twice they were literally starving 
and were saved in the nick of time by the killing, on the first 
occasion, of a big bull elk — on the next, of a small spike-buck. 
At last, sun-scorched and rain-beaten, footsore and leg-weary, 
their thighs torn to pieces by the stout briars,^ and their feet 
and hands blistered and scalded, they came out in Powell's 
Valley, and followed the well-worn hunter's trail across it. 
Thence it was easy to reach home, where the tale of their 
adventures excited still more the young frontiersmen. 

Their troubles were ended for the time being; but in 
Powell's Valley they met other wanderers whose toil and 
peril had just begun. There they encountered the company ^ 
which Daniel Boone was just leading across the mountains, 
with the hope of making a permanent settlement in the far- 
distant Kentucky.^ Boone had sold his farm on the Yadkin 
and all the goods he could not carry with him, and in Sep- 
tember, 1773, he started for Kentucky with his wife and his 
children ; five families, and forty men besides, went with him, 
driving their horses and cattle. It was the first attempt that 
was made to settle a region separated by long stretches of wil- 
derness from the already inhabited districts ; and it was doomed 
to failure. On approaching the gloomy and forbidding defiles 
of the Cumberland Mountains the party was attacked by In- 
dians.* Six of the men, including Boone's eldest son, were 
slain, and the cattle scattered ; and though the backwoodsmen 

^ They evidently wore breech-clouts and leggings, not trousers. 
* McAfee MSS. " Filson's "Boone." 

■* October _io, 1773, Filson's "Boone." The McAfee MSS. speak of meet- 
ing Boone in Powell's Valley and getting home in September; if so, it 
must have been the very end of the month. 



130 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

rallied and repulsed their assailants, yet they had suffered such 
loss and damage that they returned and took up their abode 
temporarily on the Clinch River. 

In the same year Simon Kenton, afterward famous as a 
scout and Indian fighter, in company with other hunters, wan- 
dered through Kentucky. Kenton, like every one else, was 
astounded at the beauty and fertility of the land and the in- 
numerable herds of buffalo, elk, and other game that thronged 
the trampled ground around the licks. One of his compan- 
ions was taken by the Indians, who burned him alive. 

In the following year numerous parties of surveyors visited 
the land. One of these was headed by John Floyd, who was 
among the ablest of the Kentucky pioneers, and afterward 
played a prominent part in the young commonwealth, until 
his death at the hands of the savages. Floyd was at the time 
assistant surveyor of Fincastle County; and his party went 
out for the purpose of making surveys "by virtue of the Gov- 
ernor's warrant for officers and soldiers on the Ohio and its 
waters." ^ 

They started on April 9, 1774 — eight men in all — from their 
homes in Fincastle County.- They went down the Kanawha 
in a canoe, shooting bear and deer, and catching great pike 
and catfish. The first survey they made was one of two thou- 
sand acres for "Colo. Washington" ; and they made another 
for Patrick Henry. On the way they encountered other par- 
ties of surveyors, and learned that an Indian war was threat- 
ened; for a party of thirteen would-be settlers on the upper 

^The account of this journey of Floyd and his companions is taken 
from a very interesting MS. Journal, kept by one of the party — Thomas 
Hanson. It was furnished me, together with other valuable papers, 
through the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Trigg, of Abingdon, Va., 
and of Dr. George Ben. Johnston, of Richmond, to whom I take this 
opportunity of returning my warm thanks. 

' From the house of Colonel William Preston, "at one o'clock, in high 
spirits." They took the canoe at the mouth of Elk River, on the sixteenth. 
Most of the diary is, of course, taken up with notes on the character and 
fertility of the lands, and memoranda of the surveys made. Especial 
comment is made on a burning spring by the Kanawha, which is dubbed 
"one of the wonders of the world." 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 131 

Ohio had been attacked, but had repelled their assailants, and 
in consequence the Shawnees had declared for war, and threat- 
ened thereafter to kill the Virginians and rob the Pennsylva- 
nians wherever they found them,^ The reason for this dis- 
crimination in favor of the citizens of the Quaker State was 
that the Virginians with whom the Indians came chiefly in 
contact were settlers, whereas the Pennsylvanians were traders. 
The marked difference in the way the savages looked at the 
two classes received additional emphasis in Lord Dunmore's 
war. 

At the mouth of the Kanawha " the adventurers found 
twenty or thirty men gathered together; some had come to 
settle, but most wished to explore or survey the lands. All 
were in high spirits, and resolute to go to Kentucky, in spite 
of Indian hostilities. Some of them joined Floyd, and raised 
his party to eighteen men, who started down the Ohio in four 
canoes.^ They found "a battoe loaded with corn," apparently 
abandoned, and took about three bushels with them. Other 
parties joined them from time to time, as they paddled and 
drifted down the stream; and one or two of their own num- 
ber, alarmed by further news of Indian hostilities, went back. 
Once they met a party of Delawares, by whom they were not 
molested; and again, two or three of their number encoun- 
tered a couple of hostile savages ; and though no one was hurt, 
the party was kept on the watch all the time. They marvelled 
much at the great trees — one sycamore was thirty-seven feet 
in circumference — and on a Sunday, which they kept as a day 
of rest, they examined with interest the forest-covered em- 
bankments of a fort at the mouth of the Scioto, a memorial 
of the mound-builders who had vanished centuries before. 

When they reached the mouth of the Kentucky * they found 

^They received this news on April 17th, and confirmation thereof on 
the 19th. The dates should be kept in mind, as they show that the Shaw- 
nees had begun hostilities from a fortnight to a month before Cresap's 
attack and the murder of Logan's family, which will be described here- 
after. 

^ Which they reached on the twentieth. 

^ On the twenty-second. * On May 13th. 



132 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

two Delawares and a squaw, to whom they gave corn and 
salt. Here they spHt up, and Floyd and his original party 
spent a week in the neighborhood, surveying land, going some 
distance up the Kentucky to a salt-lick, where they saw a herd 
of three hundred buffalo.^ They then again embarked, and 
drifted down the Ohio. On May 26th they met two Dela- 
wares in a canoe flying a red flag; they had been sent down 
the river with a pass from the commandant at Fort Pitt to 
gather their hunters and get them home, in view of the threat- 
ened hostilities between the Shawnees and Virginians.^ The 
actions of the two Indians were so suspicious, and the news 
they brought was so alarming, that some of Floyd's compan- 
ions became greatly alarmed, and wished to go straight on 
down the Mississippi; but Floyd swore that he would finish 
his work unless actually forced off. Three days afterward 
they reached the falls. 

Here Floyd spent a fortnight, making surveys in every 
direction, and then started off to explore the land between the 
Salt River and the Kentucky. Like the others, he carried his 
own pack, which consisted of little but his blanket and his 
instruments. He sometimes had difficulties with his men. 
One of them refused to carry the chain one day, and went off 
to hunt, got lost, and was not found for thirty-six hours. 
Another time it was noticed that two of the hunters had 
become sullen, and seemed anxious to leave camp. The fol- 
lowing morning, while on the march, the party killed an elk 
and halted for breakfast; but the two hunters walked on, and, 
says the journal, "we never saw them more" ; but whether 

* There were quarrels among the surveyors. The entry for May 13th 
runs : "Our company divided, eleven men went up to Harrad's company 
one hundred miles up the Cantucky or Louisa river (n. b. one Capt. 
llarrad has been there many months building a kind of Town &c) in 
order to make improvements. This day a quarrel arose between Mr. Lee 
and Mr. Hyte; Lee cut a Stick and gave Hyte a Whiping with it, upon 
which Mr. Floyd demanded the King's Peace which stopt it sooner than 
it w'-"ild have ended if he had not been there." 

* They said that in a skirmish the whites had killed thirteen Shawnees, 
two Aiingos, and one Delaware (this may or may not mean the massacres 
by Cresap and Greathouse, see, post, chapter on Lord Dunmore's War). 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 133 

they got back to the settlements or perished in the wilderness, 
none could tell. 

The party suffered much hardship. Floyd fell sick, and for 
three days could not travel. They gave him an "Indian 
sweat," probably building just such a little sweat-house as the 
Indians use to this day. Others of their number at different 
times fell ill ; and they were ever on the watch for Indians. In 
the vast forests, every sign of a human being was the sign of 
a probable enemy. Once they heard a gun, and another time 
a sound as of a man calling to another; and on each occasion 
they redoubled their caution, keeping guard as they rested, 
and at night extinguishing their camp-fire and sleeping a mile 
or two from it. 

They built a bark canoe in which to cross the Kentucky, 
and on the ist of July they met another party of surveyors 
on the banks of that stream.^ Two or three days afterward, 
Floyd and three companions left the others, agreeing to meet 
them on August ist, at a cabin built by a man named Har- 
wood, on the south side of the Kentucky, a few miles from the 
mouth of the Elkhom. For three weeks they surveyed and 
hunted, enchanted with the beauty of the country.^ They then 
went to the cabin, several days before the appointed time; but 
to their surprise found everything scattered over the ground, 
and two fires burning, while on a tree near the landing was 
written : "Alarmed by finding some people killed and we are 
gone down." This left the four adventurers in a bad plight, 
as they had but fifteen rounds of powder left, and none of 
them knew the way home. However, there was no help for 
it, and they started off.^ When they came to the mountains 

* Where the journal says the land "is like a paradise, it is so good and 
beautiful." 

^ The journal for July 8th says: "The Land is so good that I cannot 
give it its due Praise. The undergrowth is Clover, Pea-vine, Cane & 
Nettles; intermingled with Rich Weed. It's timber is Honey Locust, 
Black Walnut, Sugar Tree, Hickory, Iron-Wood, Hoop Wood, Mul- 
berry, Ash and Elm and some Oak." And later it dwells on the high 
limestone cliffs facing the river on both sides. 

'On July 25th. 



134 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

they found it such hard going that they were obHged to throw 
away their blankets and everything else except their rifles, 
hunting-shirts, leggings, and moccasins. Like the other par- 
ties of returning explorers, they found this portion of their 
journey extremely distressing; and they suffered much from 
sore feet, and also from want of food, until they came on a 
gang of buffaloes and killed two. At last they struck Cum- 
berland Gap, followed a blazed trail across it to Powell's Val- 
ley, and on August 9th came to the outlying settlements on 
Clinch River, where they found the settlers all in their wooden 
forts, because of the war with the Shawnees.^ 

In this same year many different bodies of hunters and 
surveyors came into the country, drifting down the Ohio in 
pirogues. Some forty men, led by Harrod and Sowdowsky ^ 
founded Harrodsburg, where they built cabins and sowed corn, 
but the Indians killed one of their number and the rest dis- 
persed. Some returned across the mountains ; but Sowdowsky 
and another went through the woods to the Cumberland River, 
where they built a canoe, paddled down the muddy Mississippi 
between unending reaches of lonely marsh and forest, and 
from New Orleans took ship to Virginia. 

At that time, among other parties of surs^eyors there was 

^I have given the account of Floyd's journey at some length as illus- 
trating the experience of a typical party of surveyors. The journal has 
never hitherto been alluded to, and my getting hold of it was almost 
accidental. 

There were three different kinds of explorers : Boone represents the 
hunters ; the McAfees represent the would-be settlers ; and Floyd's party 
the surveyors who mapped out the land for owners of land grants. In 
1774, there were parties of each kind in Kentucky. Floyd's experience 
shows that these parties were continually meeting others and splitting up ; 
he started out with eight men, at one time was in a body with thirty- 
seven, and returned home with four. 

The journal is written in a singularly clear and legible hand, evidently 
by a man of good education. 

' The latter, from his name presumably of Sclavonic ancestry, came 
originally from New York, always a centre of mixed nationalities. He 
founded a most respectable family, some of whom have changed their 
name to Sandusky; but there seems to be no justification for their claim 
that they gave Sandusky its name, for this is almost certainly a corrup- 
tion of its old Algonquin title. "American Pioneer" (Cincinnati, 1843), 

n, p. 325. 



BOONE AND THE LONG HUNTERS 135 

one which had been sent by Lord Dunmore to the Falls of 
the Ohio. When the war broke out between the Shawnees 
and the Virginians, Lord Dunmore, being very anxious for 
the fate of these surveyors, sent Boone and Stoner to pilot 
them in; which the two bush veterans accordingly did, mak- 
ing the round trip of eight hundred miles in sixty-four days. 
The outbreak of the Indian war caused all the hunters and 
surveyors to leave Kentucky; and at the end of 1774 there 
were no whites left, either there or in what is now middle 
Tennessee. But on the frontier all men's eyes were turned 
toward these new and fertile regions. The pioneer work of 
the hunter was over, and that of the axe-bearing settler was 
about to begin. 

NOTE A 

Office of the Secretary of State 

Nashville, Tenn., June 12, 1888. 
Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, 

Sagamore Hill, Long Island, N. Y. 

Dear Sir: 

I was born, "raised," and have always lived in Washington County, 
E. Tenn. Was born on the "head-waters" of "Boone's Creek," in said 
county. I resided for several years in the "Boone's Creek Civil Dis- 
trict," in Washington County (this some "twenty years ago"), within 
two miles of the historic tree in question, on which is carved, "D. Boon 
cilled a bar &c." ; having visited and examined the tree more than once. 
The tree is a beech, still standing, though fast decaying. It is located 
some eight miles northeast of Jonesboro, the county seat of Wash- 
ington, on the "waters of Boone's Creek," which creek was named 
after Daniel Boone, and on which (creek) it is certain Daniel Boone 
"camped" during a winter or two. The tree stands about two miles 
from the spring, where it has always been understood Boone's camp 
was. More than twenty years ago, I have heard old gentlemen (living 
in the neighborhood of the tree), who were then from fifty to seventy 
years old, assert that the carving was on the tree when they were boys, 
and that the tradition in the community was that the inscription was 
on the tree when discovered by the first permanent settlers. The pos- 
ture of the tree is "leaning," so that a "bar," or other animal could 
ascend it without difficulty. 

While the letters could be clearly traced when I last looked at them, 
still because of the expansion of the bark, it was difficult, and I heard 



136 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

old gentlemen years ago remark upon the changed appearance of the 
inscription from what it was when they first knew it. 

Boone certainly camped for a time under the tree ; the creek is named 
after him (has always been known as Boone's Creek) ; the Civil Dis- 
trict is named after him, and the post office also. True, the story as 
to the carving is traditionary, but a man had as well question in that 
community the authenticity of "Holy Writ," as the fact that Boone 
carved the inscription on that tree. 

I am very respectfully, 

John Allison. 

NOTE B 

The following copy of an original note of Boone's was sent me by 
Judge John N. Lea : 

July the 20", 1786. Sir, The Land has Been Long Survayd and 
Not Knowing When the Money would be Rady Was the Reason of 
my not Returning the Works however the may be Returned when 
you pleas. But I must have Nother Copy of the Entry as I have lost 
that I had when I lost my plating instruments and only have the Short 
Field Notes. Just the Corse Distance and Corner trees pray send me 
Nother Copy that I may know how to give it the proper bounderry 
agreeable to the Location and I Will send the plat to the offis medetly 
if you chose it, the expense is as follows 

Survayer's fees £9 3 8 

Ragesters fees 7 14 o 

Chanman 8 o o 

purvisions of the tower 2 o o 



£26 17 8 



You will also Send a Copy of the agreement betwixt Mr. [illegible] 
overton and myself Where I Red the warrants. 
I am, sir, your omble servant, 

Daniel Boone. 



CHAPTER VII 

SEVIER, ROBERTSON, AND THE WATAUGA 
COMMONWEALTH 

I 769-1 774 

SOON after the successful ending of the last colonial 
struggle with France, and the conquest of Canada, the 
British king issued a proclamation forbidding the Eng- 
lish colonists from trespassing on Indian grounds, or moving 
west to the mountains. But in 1768, at the treaty of Fort 
Stanwix, the Six Nations agreed to surrender to the English 
all the lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee ; ^ and 
this treaty was at once seized upon by the backwoodsmen as 
offering an excuse for settling beyond the mountains. How- 
ever, the Iroquois had ceded lands to which they had no more 
right than a score or more of other Indian tribes ; and these 
latter, not having been consulted, felt at perfect liberty to 
make war on the intruders. In point of fact, no one tribe or 
set of tribes could cede Kentucky or Tennessee, because no 
one tribe or set of tribes owned either. The great hunting- 
grounds between the Ohio and the Tennessee formed a de- 
batable land, claimed by every tribe that could hold its own 
against its rivals.^ 

^ Then called the Cherokee. 

* Volumes could be filled — and indeed it is hardly too much to say, have 
heen filled — with worthless "proofs" of the ownership of Iroquois, 
Shawnees, or Cherokees, as the case might be. In truth, it would prob- 
ably have been difficult to get any two members of the same tribe to have 
pointed out with precision the tribal limits. Each tribe's country was 
elastic, for it included all lands from which it was deemed possible to 
drive out the possessors. In 1773, the various parties of Long Hunters 
had just the same right to the whole of the territory in question that 
the Indians themselves had. 

137 



138 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The eastern part of what is now Tennessee consists of a 
great hill-strewn, forest-clad valley, running from northeast 
to southwest, bounded on one side by the Cumberland, and 
on the other by the Great Smoky and Unaka mountains; the 
latter separating it from North Carolina. In this valley arise 
and end the Clinch, the Holston, the Watauga, the Noli- 
chucky, the French Broad, and the other streams, whose com- 
bined volume makes the Tennessee River. The upper end 
of the valley lies in southwestern Virginia, the headwaters of 
some of the rivers being well within that State; and though 
the province was really part of North Carolina, it was sepa- 
rated therefrom by high mountain chains, while from Virginia 
it was easy to follow the watercourses down the valley. Thus, 
as elsewhere among the mountains forming the Western fron- 
tier, the first movements of population went parallel with, 
rather than across, the ranges. As in western Virginia the 
first settlers came, for the most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in 
turn, in what was then western North Carolina, and is now 
eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came mainly from Virginia, 
and, indeed, in great part, from this same Pennsylvanian stock.^ 

' Campbell MSS. 

"The first settlers on Holston River were a remarkable race of people 
for their intelligencej enterprise, and hardy adventure. The greater por- 
tion of them had emigrated from the counties of Botetourt, Augusta, and 
Frederick, and others along the same valley, and from the upper counties 
of Maryland and Pennsylvania; were mostly descendants of Irish stock, 
and generally, where they had any religious opinions, were Presbyterians. 
A very large proportion were religious, and many were members of the 
church. There were some families, however, and amongst the mostly 
wealthy, that were extremely wild and dissipated in their habits. 

"The first clergyman that came among them was the Rev. Charles Cum- 
mings, an Irishman by birth, but educated in Pennsylvania. This gentle- 
rnan was one of the first settlers, defended his dornicile for years with 
his rifle in hand, and built his first meeting-house on the very spot where 
he and two or three neighbors and one of his servants had had a severe 
skirmish with the Indians, in which one of his party was killed and an- 
other wounded. Here he preached to a very large and most respectable 
congregation for twenty or thirty years. He was a zealous Whig, and 
contributed much to kindle the patriotic fire which blazed forth among 
these people in the revolutionary struggle." 

This is from a MS. sketch of the Holston pioneers, by the Hon. David 
Campbell, a son of one of the first settlers. The Campbell family, of 
Presbyterian Irish stock, first came to Pennsylvania, and drifted south. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 139 

Of course, in each case there was also a very considerable 
movement directly westward.^ They were a sturdy race, en- 
terprising and intelligent, fond of the strong excitement in- 
herent in the adventurous frontier life. Their untamed and 
turbulent passions, and the lawless freedom of their lives made 
them a population very productive of wild, headstrong char- 
acters; yet, as a whole, they were a God-fearing race, as 
was but natural in those who sprang from the loins of the Irish 
Calvinists. Their preachers, all Presbyterians, followed close 
behind the first settlers, and shared their toil and dangers; 
they tilled their fields rifle in hand, and fought the Indians 
valorously. They felt that they were dispossessing the Canaan- 
ites, and were thus working the Lord's will in preparing the 
land for a race which they believed was more truly His chosen 
people than was that nation which Joshua led across the Jordan. 
They exhorted no less earnestly in the bare meeting-houses 
on Sunday, because their hands were roughened with guiding 
the plough and wielding the axe on week-days; for they did 
not believe that being called to preach the word of God ab- 
solved them from earning their living by the sweat of their 

In the Revolutionary War it produced good soldiers and commanders, 
such as William and Arthur Campbell. The Campbells intermarried with 
the Prestons, Breckenridges, and other historic families ; and their blood 
now runs in the veins of many of the noted men of the States south of 
the Potomac and Ohio. 

*The first settlers on the Watauga included both Virginians (as "Cap- 
tain" William Bean, whose child was the first born in what is now Ten- 
nessee; Ramsey, 94) and Carolinians (Haywood, 37). But many of these 
Carolina hill people were, like Boone and Henderson, members of fam- 
ilies who had drifted down from the North. The position of the Pres- 
byterian churches in all this Western hill country shows the origin of 
that portion of the people which gave the tone to the rest; and, as we 
have already seen, while some of the Presbyterians penetrated to the 
hills from Charleston, most came down from the North. The Presbyte- 
rian blood was, of course, Irish or Scotch ; and the numerous English 
from the coast regions also mingled with the two former kindred stocks, 
and adopted their faith. The Huguenots, Hollanders, and many of the 
Germans, being of Calvinistic creed, readily assimilated themselves to the 
Presbyterians. The absence of Episcopacy on the Western border, while 
in part indicating merely the lack of religion in the backwoods, and the 
natural growth of dissent in such a society, also indicates that the people 
were not of pure English descent, and were of different stock from those 
east of them. 



140 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

brows. The women, the wives of the settlers, were of the 
same iron temper. They fearlessly fronted every danger the 
men did, and they worked quite as hard. They prized the 
knowledge and learning they themselves had been forced to do 
without; and many a backwoods woman, by thrift and indus- 
try, by the sale of her butter and cheese, and the calves from 
her cows, enabled her husband to give his sons good schooling, 
and perhaps to provide for some favored member oi the fam- 
ily the opportunity to secure a really first-class education.^ 

The valley in which these splendid pioneers of our people 
settled lay directly in the track of the Indian marauding par- 
ties, for the great war trail used by the Cherokees and by their 
Northern foes ran along its whole length. This war trail, or 
war trace, as it was then called, was in places very distinct, 
although apparently never as well marked as were some of the 
buffalo trails. It sent off a branch to Cumberland Gap, whence 
it ran directly north through Kentucky to the Ohio, being 
there known as the warriors' path. Along these trails the 
Northern and Southern Indians passed and repassed when 
they went to war against each other; and of course they were 
ready and eager to attack any white man who might settle down 
along their course. 

In 1769, the year that Boone first went to Kentucky, the 
first permanent settlers came to the banks of the Watauga,- 
the settlement being merely an enlargement of the Virginia 
settlement, which had for a short time existed on the head- 
waters of the Holston, especially near Wolf Hills. ^ At first 
the settlers thought they were still in the domain of Virginia, 
for at that time the line marking her southern boundary had 

'Campbell MSS. 

' For this settlement see especially "Civil and Political History of the 
State of Tennessee," John Haywood (Knoxville, 1823), p. 2)T, also "An- 
nals of Tennessee," J. G. M. Ramsey (Charleston, 1853), p. 92; "History 
of Middle Tennessee," A. W. Putnam (Nashville, 1859), p. 21; the 
Address of the Hon. John Allison to the Tennessee Press Association 
(Nashville, 1887) ; and the "History of Tennessee," by James Phelan 
(Boston. i888). 

* Now Abingdon. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 141 

not been run so far west.^ Indeed, had they not considered 
the land as belonging to Virginia, they would probably not 
at the moment have dared to intrude farther on territory 
claimed by the Indians. But while the treaty between the 
Crown and the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix - had resulted in 
the cession of whatever right the Six Nations had to the south- 
western territory, another treaty was concluded about the 
same time ^ with the Cherokees, by which the latter agreed 
to surrender their claims to a small portion of this country, 
though as a matter of fact before the treaty was signed white 
settlers had crowded beyond the limits allowed them. These 
two treaties, in the first of which one set of tribes surrendered 
a small portion of land, while in the second an entirely dif- 
ferent confederacy surrendered a large tract, which, however, 
included part of the first cession, are sufficient to show the 
absolute confusion of the Indian land titles. 

But in 1 771, one of the newcomers,"* who was a practical 
surveyor, ran out the Virginia boundary-line some distance 
to the westward, and discovered that the Watauga settlement 
came within the limits of North Carolina. Hitherto the set- 
tlers had supposed that they themselves were governed by the 
Virginia law, and that their rights as against the Indians were 
guaranteed by the Virginian government; but this discovery 
threw them back upon their own resources. They suddenly 
found themselves obliged to organize a civil government, un- 
der which they themselves should live, and at the same time to 
enter into a treaty on their own account with the neighboring 
Indians, to whom the land they were on apparently belonged. 

The first need was even more pressing than the second. 
North Carolina was always a turbulent and disorderly colony, 
unable to enforce law and justice even in the long-settled dis- 

* It only went to Steep Rock. ' November 5, 1768. 

' October 14, 1768, at Hard Labor, S. C, confirmed by the treaty of 
October 18, 1770, at Lockabar, S. C. Both of these treaties acknowledged 
the rights of the Cherokees to the major part of these northwestern 
hunting-grounds. 

* Anthony Bledsoe. 



142 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tricts; so that it was wholly out of the question to appeal to 
her for aid in governing a remote and outlying community. 
Moreover, about the time that the Watauga commonwealth 
was founded, the troubles in North Carolina came to a head. 
Open war ensued between the adherents of the royal governor, 
Tryon, on the one hand, and the Regulators, as the insurgents 
styled themselves, on the other, the struggle ending with the 
overthrow of the Regulators at the battle of the Alamance.^ 
As a consequence of these troubles, many people from the 
back counties of North Carolina crossed the mountains, and 
took up their abode among the pioneers on the Watauga ^ and 
upper Holston; the beautiful valley of the Nolichucky soon 
receiving its share of this stream of immigration. Among the 
first comers were many members of the class of desperate 
adventurers always to be found hanging round the outskirts 
of frontier civilization. Horse thieves, murderers, escaped 
bond-servants, runaway debtors — all, in fleeing from the law, 
sought to find a secure asylum in the wilderness. The brutal 
and lawless wickedness of these men, whose uncouth and raw 
savagery was almost more repulsive than that of city criminals, 
made it imperative upon the decent members of the community 
to unite for self -protection. The desperadoes were often mere 
human beasts of prey; they plundered whites and Indians im- 
partially. They not only by their thefts and murders exas- 
perated the Indians into retaliating on innocent whites, but, on 
the other hand, they also often deserted their own color and 
went to live among the redskins, becoming their leaders in the 
worst outrajjes.^ 



'fc)'' 



*'May 16, 1771. 

'It is said that the greatest proportion of the early settlers came from 
Wake County, N. C, as did Robertson ; but many of them, like Robertson, 
were of Virginian birth; and the great majority were of the same stock 
as the Virginian and Pennsylvanian mountaineers. Of the five meml)ers 
of the "court" or governing committee of Watauga, three were of Vir- 
gniian birth, one came from South Carolina, and the origin of the other 
is not specified. Ramsey, 107. 

'In Collins, II, 345, is an account of what may be termed a tvpe family 
of tlicse frontier barbarians. They were named Harpe; and there is 
something rcvoltingly bestial in the record of their crimes; of how thcv 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 143 

But the bulk of the settlers were men of sterling worth, fit 
to be the pioneer fathers of a mighty and beautiful State. 
They possessed the courage that enabled them to defy outside 
foes, together with the rough, practical common sense that 
allowed them to establish a simple but effective form of gov- 
ernment, so as to preserve order among themselves. To suc- 
ceed in the wilderness, it was necessary to possess not only 
daring, but also patience and the capacity to endure grinding 
toil. The pioneers were hunters and husbandmen. Each, by 
the aid of axe and brand, cleared his patch of corn land in 
the forest, close to some clear, swift-flowing stream, and by 
his skill with the rifle won from cane-brake and woodland the 
game on which his family lived until the first crop was grown. 

A few more of the reckless and foolhardy, and more espe- 
cially of those who were either merely hunters and not farmers, 
or else who were of doubtful character, lived entirely by them- 
selves ; but, as a rule, each knot of settlers was gathered to- 
gether into a little stockaded hamlet, called a fort or station. 
This system of defensive villages was very distinctive of 
pioneer backwoods life, and was unique of its kind; without it 
the settlement of the West and Southwest would have been 
indefinitely postponed. In no other way could the settlers 
have combined for defense, while yet retaining their individual 
ownership of the land. The Watauga forts or palisaded vil- 
lages were of the usual kind, the cabins and blockhouses con- 
nected by a heavy loopholed picket. They were admirably 
adapted for defense with the rifle. As there was no moat, there 
was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was 
stored within; and it was, of course, necessary to guard care- 
fully against surprise. But to open assault they were prac- 

travelled through the country, the elder brother, Micajah Harpe, with two 
wives, the younger with only one ; of the appalling number of murders 
they committed, for even small suras of money; of their unnatural pro- 
posal to kill all their children, so that they should not be hampered in 
their flight; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble 
ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the account of 
how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the borderers 
showed to massacre the women and children as well as the men. 



144 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tically impregnable, and they therefore offered a sure haven 
of refuge to the settlers in case of an Indian inroad. In time 
of peace, tht inhabitants moved out, to live in their isolated 
log cabins and till the stump-dotted clearings. Trails led 
through the dark forests from one station to another, as well 
as to the settled districts beyond the mountains; and at long 
intervals men drove along them bands of pack-horses, laden 
with the few indispensable necessaries the settlers could not 
procure by their own labor. The pack-horse was the first, and 
for a long time the only, method of carrying on trade in the 
backwoods; and the business of the packer was one of the 
leading frontier industries. 

The settlers worked hard and hunted hard, and lived both 
plainly and roughly. Their cabins were roofed with clap- 
boards, or huge shingles, split from the log with maul and 
wedge, and held in place by heavy stones, or by poles; the 
floors were made of rived puncheons, hewn smooth on one 
surface; the chimney was outside the hut, made of rock when 
possible, otherwise of logs thickly plastered with clay that 
was strengthened with hogs' bristles or deer hair ; in the great 
fireplace was a tongue on which to hang pothooks and kettle; 
the unglazed window had a wooden shutter, and the door was 
made of great clapboards.^ The men made their ov/n harness, 
farming implements, and domestic utensils; and, as in every 
other community still living in the heroic age, the smith was 
a person of the utmost importance. There was but one thing 
that all could have in any quantity, and that was land; each 
had all of this he wanted for the taking — or if it was known 
to belong to the Indians, he got its use for a few trinkets 
or a flask of whiskey. A few of the settlers still kept some 
of the Presbyterian austerity of character, as regards amuse- 
ments; but, as a rule, they were fond of horse-racing, drink- 
ing, dancing, and fiddling. The corn-shuckings, flax-pullings, 
log-rollings (when the felled timber was rolled off the clear- 

*In "American Pioneers," II, 445, is a full description of the better 
sort of backwoods log cabin. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 145 

ings), house-raisings, maple-sugar boilings, and the like were 
scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which 
the whole neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult 
if a man was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none 
but a base churl would refuse his assistance. The backwoods 
people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they 
loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their nar- 
row lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear 
to a strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath their 
moodiness and their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that 
when roused was terrible in its ruthless and stern intensity of 
purpose. 

Such were the settlers of the Watauga, the founders of 
the commonwealth that grew into the State of Tennessee, who 
early in 1772 decided that they must form some kind of gov- 
ernment that would put down wrong-doing and work equity 
between man and man. Two of their number already tow- 
ered head and shoulders above the rest in importance, and 
merit especial mention; for they were destined for the next 
thirty years to play the chief parts in the history of that por- 
tion of the Southwest which largely through their own efforts 
became the State of Tennessee. These two men, neither of 
them yet thirty years of age, were John Sevier and James 
Robertson.^ 

Robertson first came to the Watauga early in 1770.- He 
had then been married for two years, and had been "learning 
his letters and to spell" from his well-educated wife; for he 
belonged to a backwoods family, even poorer than the aver- 

* Both were born in Virginia : Sevier in Rockingham County, Sep- 
tember 23, 1745, and Robertson in Brunswick County, June 28, 1742. 

" Putnam, p. 21 ; who, however, is evidently in error in thinking he was 
accompanied by Boone, as the latter was then in Kentucky. A recent 
writer revives this error in another form, stating that Robertson accom- 
panied Boone to the Watauga in 1769. Boone, however, left on his travels 
on May, 1769, and in June was in Kentucky; whereas Putnam not only 
informs us definitely that Robertson went to the Watauga for the first 
time in 1770, but also mentions that when he went his eldest son was 
already born, and this event took place in June, 1769, so that it is certain 
Boone and Robertson were not together. 



146 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

age, and he had not so much as received the rudimentary edu- 
cation that could be acquired at an "old-field" school. But 
he was a man of remarkable natural powers, above the me- 
dium height, with wiry, robust form, light-blue eyes, fair 
complexion, and dark hair; his somewhat sombre face had 
in it a look of self-contained strength that made it impres- 
sive ;^ and his taciturn, quiet, masterful way of dealing with 
men and affairs, together with his singular mixture of cool 
caution and most adventurous daring, gave him an immediate 
hold even upon such lawless spirits as those of the border. He 
was a mighty hunter ; but, unlike Boone, hunting and explora- 
tion were to him secondary affairs, and he came to examine 
the lands with the eye of a pioneer settler. He intended to have 
a home where he could bring up his family, and, if pos- 
sible, he wished to find rich lands, with good springs, where- 
to he might lead those of his neighbors who, like himself, 
eagerly desired to rise in the world, and to provide for the 
well-being of their children. 

To find such a country, Robertson, then dwelling in North 
Carolina, decided to go across the mountains. He started 
off alone on his exploring expedition, rifle in hand, and a good 
horse under him. He crossed the ranges that continue north- 
ward the Great Smokies, and spent the summer in the beau- 
tiful hill-country where the springs of the Western waters 
flowed from the ground. He had never seen so lovely a 
land. The high valleys, through which the currents ran, 
were hemmed in by towering mountain walls, with cloud-capped 
peaks. The fertile loam forming the bottoms was densely 
covered with the growth of the primeval forest, broken here 
and there by glade-like openings, where herds of game grazed 
on the tall, thick grass. 

Robertson was well treated by the few settlers, and stayed 
long enough to raise a crop of corn, the stand-by of the back- 
woods pioneer; like every other hunter, explorer, Indian 

^The description of his looks is taken from the statements of his de- 
scendants, and of the grandchildren of his contemporaries. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 147 

fighter, and wilderness wanderer, he Hved on the game he shot, 
and the small quantity of maize he was able to carry with 
him.^ In the late fall, however, when recrossing the mountain 
on his way home through the trackless forests, both game 
and corn failed him. He lost his way, was forced to abandon 
his horse among impassable precipices, and finally found his 
rifle useless, owing to the powder having become soaked. For 
fourteen days he lived almost wholly on nuts and wild berries, 
and was on the point of death from starvation when he met 
two hunters on horseback, who fed him and let him ride 
their horses by turns, and brought him safely to his home. 

Such hardships were little more than matter-of-course inci- 
dents in a life like his ; and he at once prepared to set out with 
his family for the new land. His accounts greatly excited 
his neighbors, and sixteen families made ready to accompany 
him. The little caravan started, under Robertson's guidance, 
as soon as the ground had dried after the winter rains in the 
spring of 1771.^ They travelled in the usual style of back- 
woods emigrants ; the men on foot, rifle on shoulder, the elder 
children driving the lean cows, while the women, the young 
children, and the few household goods and implements of hus- 
bandry were carried on the backs of the pack-horses; for in 
settling the backwoods during the last century, the pack-horse 
played the same part that in the present century was taken by 
the canvas-covered emigrant wagon, the white-topped "prairie- 
schooner." 

Once arrived at the Watauga, the Carolina newcomers 
mixed readily with the few Virginians already on the ground ; 
and Robertson speedily became one of the leading men in 
the little settlement. On an island in the river he built a 
house of logs with the bark still on them on the outside, though 
hewed smooth within ; tradition says that it was the largest 
in the settlement. Certainly it belonged to the better class 

^ The importance of "maize" to the Western settler is shown by the fact 
that in our tongue it has now monopolized the title of "corn." 

* Putnam, p. 24, says it was after the battle of the Great Alamance, 
which took place May 16, 1771. An untrustworthy tradition says March. 



148 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of backwoods cabins, with a loft and several rooms, a roof 
of split saplings, held down by weighty poles, a log veranda 
in front, and a huge fireplace of sticks and stones laid in 
clay, wherein the pile of blazing logs roared loudly in cool 
weather. The furniture was probably precisely like that in 
other houses of the class; a rude bed, table, settee, and chest 
of drawers, a spinning- jenny, and either three-legged stools or 
else chairs with backs and seats of undressed deer-hides. Rob- 
ertson's energy and his remarkable natural ability brought 
him to the front at once, in every way; although, as already 
said, he had much less than even the average backwoods edu- 
cation, for he could not read when he was married, while 
most of the frontiersmen could not only read but also write, 
or at least sign their names. -^ 

Sevier, who came to the Watauga early in 1772, nearly 
a year after Robertson and his little colony had arrived, dif- 
fered widely from his friend in almost every respect save high- 
mindedness and dauntless, invincible courage. He was a gen- 
tleman by birth and breeding, the son of a Huguenot who had 
settled in the Shenandoah valley. He had received a fair edu- 
cation, and though never fond of books, he was to the end 
of his days an interested and intelligent observer of men and 
things, both in America and Europe. He corresponded on 
intimate and equal terms with Madison, Franklin, and others 
of our most polished statesmen; while Robertson's letters, 
when he had finally learned to write them himself, were almost 
as remarkable for their phenomenally bad spelling as for their 
shrewd common sense and homely, straightforward honesty. 
Sevier was a very handsome man; during his lifetime he 
was reputed the handsomest in Tennessee. He was tall, fair- 
skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, 
military carriage and commanding bearing, his lithe, finely pro- 
portioned figure being well set off by the hunting-shirt which 

*In examining numerous original drafts of petitions and the like, 
signed by hundreds of original settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, I 
have been struck by the small proportion— not much over three or four 
per cent at the outside— of mvn who made Uicir mark instead of signing. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 149 

he almost invariably wore. From his French forefathers he 
inherited a gay, pleasure-loving temperament, that made him 
the most charming of companions. His manners were pol- 
ished and easy, and he had great natural dignity. Over the 
backwoodsmen he exercised an almost unbounded influence, 
due as much to his ready tact, invariable courtesy, and lavish, 
generous hospitality as to the skill and dashing prowess which 
made him the most renowned Indian fighter of the South- 
west. He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very am- 
bitious, being almost as fond of popularity as of Indian fight- 
ing.^ He was already married and the father of two children 
when he came to the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seek- 
ing a new and better home for his family in the West. So 
far, his life had been as uneventful as that of any other spir- 
ited young borderer; his business had been that of a frontier 
Indian trader; he had taken part in one or two unimportant 
Indian skirmishes.- Later, he was commissioned by Lord 
Dunmore as a captain in the Virginia line. 

^ See, in the collection of the Tennessee Historical Society at Nash- 
ville, the MS. notes containing an account of Sevier, given by one of 
the old settlers, named Hillsman. Hillsman especially dwells on the 
skill with which Sevier could persuade the backwoodsmen to come 
round to his own way of thinking, while at the same time making them 
believe that they were acting on their own ideas, and adds : "What- 
ever he had was at the service of his friends and for the promotion of 
the Sevier party, which sometimes embraced nearly all the population." 

^Mr. James Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his "John Sevier," makes 
some assertions, totally unbacked by proof, about his hero's alleged feats, 
when only a boy, in the wars between the Virginians and the Indians. 
He gives no dates, but can only refer to Pontiac's war. Sevier was 
then eighteen years old, but nevertheless is portrayed, among other things, 
as leading "a hundred hardy borderers" into the Indian country, burn- 
ing their villages and "often defeating bodies of five times his own 
numbers." These statements are supported by no better authority than 
traditions gathered a century and a quarter after the event, and must 
be dismissed as mere fable. They show a total and rather amusing 
ignorance not only of the conditions of Indian warfare, but also of the 
history of the particular contest referred to. Mr. Gilmore forgets 
that we have numerous histories of the war in which Sevier is sup- 
posed to have distinguished himself, and that in not one of them is there 
a syllable hinting at what he says. Neither Sevier nor any one else 
ever with a hundred men defeated "five times his number" of north- 
western Indians in the woods ; and, during Sevier's life in Virginia, 
the only defeat ever suffered by such a body of Indians was at Bushy 



I50 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Such were Sevier and Robertson, the leaders in the little 
frontier outpost of civilization that was struggling to main- 
tain itself on the Watauga; and these two men afterward 
proved themselves to be, with the exception of George Rogers 
Clark, the greatest of the first generation of Trans-Alleghany 
pioneers. 

Their followers were worthy of them. All alike were keenly 
alive to the disadvantages of living in a community where 
there was neither law nor officer to enforce it. Accordingly, 
with their characteristic capacity for combination, so striking 
as existing together with the equally characteristic capacity for 
individual self-help, the settlers determined to organize a gov- 
ernment of their own. They promptly put their resolution 
into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson being ap- 
parently the leader in the movement. 

They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by 
which their conduct should be governed ; and these were known 
as the Articles of the Watauga Association. They formed a 
written constitution, the first ever adopted west of the moun- 
tains, or by a community composed of American-born free- 
men. It is this fact of the early independence and self-gov- 
ernment of the settlers along the headwaters of the Tennessee 
that gives to their history its peculiar importance. They were 
the first men of American birth to establish a free and inde- 
pendent community on the continent. Even before this date, 
there had been straggling settlements of Pennsylvanians and 
Virginians along the headwaters of the Ohio; but these set- 
Run, when Bouquet gained a hard-fought victory. After the end of 
Pontiac's war there was no expedition of importance undertaken by Vir- 
ginians against the Indians until 1774, and of Pontiac's war itself we 
have full knowledge. Sevier was neither leader nor participant in any 
such marvelous feats as Mr. Gilmore describes; on the contrary, the 
skirmishes in which he may have been engaged were of such small 
importance that no record remains concerning them. Had Sevier done 
any such deeds all the colonies would have rung with his exploits, in- 
stead of their remaining utterly unknown for a hundred and twenty-five 
years. It is extraordinary that any author should be willing to put 
his name to such reckless misstatements, in what purports to be a his- 
tory and not a book of fiction. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 151 

tiements remained mere parts of the colonies behind them, and 
neither grew into a separate community, nor played a distinc- 
tive part in the growth of the West. 

The first step taken by the Watauga settlers,^ when they had 
determined to organize, was to meet in general convention, 
holding a kind of folk-thing, akin to the New England town 
meeting. They then elected a representative assembly, a small 
parliament or "witanagemot," which met at Robertson's sta- 
tion. Apparently the freemen of each little fort or palisaded 
village, each blockhouse that was the centre of a group of 
detached cabins and clearings, sent a member to this first fron- 
tier legislature.^ It consisted of thirteen representatives, who 
proceeded to elect from their number five — among them Sevier 
and Robertson — to form a committee or court, which should 
carry on the actual business of government, and should exer- 
cise both judicial and executive functions. This court had 
a clerk and a sheriff, or executive officer, who respectively 
recorded and enforced their decrees. 

The five members of this court, who are sometimes re- 
ferred to as arbitrators and sometimes as commissioners, had 
entire control of all matters affecting the common weal; and 
all affairs in controversy were settled by the decision of a ma- 
jority. They elected one of their number as chairman, he 
being also ex-officio chairman of the committee of thirteen; 
and all their proceedings were noted for the prudence and 
moderation with which they behaved in their somewhat anoma- 
lous position. They were careful to avoid embroiling them- 
selves with the neighboring colonial legislatures ; and in dealing 
with non-residents they made them give bonds to abide by 
their decision, thus avoiding any necessity of proceeding against 
their persons. On behalf of the community itself, they were 
not only permitted to control its internal affairs, but also to 
secure lands by making treaties with a foreign power, the In- 

*The Watauga settlers and those of Carter's "Valley were the first to 
organize ; the Nolichucky people came in later. 
' Putnam, 30. 



152 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

dians — a distinct exercise of the right of sovereignty. The)' 
heard and adjudicated all cases of difference between the set- 
tlers themselves; and took measures for the common safety. 
In fact, the dwellers, in this little outlying frontier common- 
wealth, exercised the rights of full statehood for a number 
of years; establishing in true American style a purely demo- 
cratic government with representative institutions, in which, 
under certain restrictions, the will of the majority was su- 
preme, while, nevertheless, the largest individual freedom and 
the utmost liberty of individual initiative were retained. The 
framers showed the American predilection for a written con- 
stitution or civil compact ;^ and, what was more important, 
they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led 
them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the 
simplest way best serve their need, without bothering their 
heads over mere high-sounding abstractions. 

The court or committee held their sessions at stated and 
regular times, and took the law of Virginia as their standard 
for decisions. They saw to the recording of deeds and wills, 
settled all questions of debt, issued marriage licenses, and car- 
ried on a most vigorous warfare against law-breakers, espe- 
cially horse thieves.- For six years their government con- 
tinued in full vigor; then, in February, 1778, North Carolina 
having organized Washington County, which included all of 
what is now Tennessee, the governor of that State appointed 
justices of the peace and militia officers for the new county, 
and the old system came to an end. But Sevier, Robertson, 
and their fellow committeemen were all members of the new 
court, and continued almost without change their former 
simple system of procedure and direct and expeditious methods 

* The original articles of the Watauga Association have been lost, and 
no copies are extant. All we know of the matter is derived from 
Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam, three historians to whose praiseworthy 
industry Tennessee owes as much as Kentucky does to Marshall, Butler, 
and Collins. Ramsey, by the way, chooses rather inappropriate adjectives 
when he calls the government "paternal and patriarchal." 

'A very good account of this government is given in Allison's Address, 
pp. 5-8, and from it the examples in the text are taken. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 153 

of administering justice; as justices of the peace they merely 
continued to act as they acted while arbitrators of the Watauga 
Association, and in their summary mode of deaHng with evil- 
doers paid a good deal more heed to the essence than to the 
forms of law. One record shows that a horse thief was ar- 
rested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on Friday 
of the same week. Another deals with a claimant who, by 
his attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, "but 
the court swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier 
had been elected," and being evidently unwilling to waste their 
time hearing a contested-election case when their minds were 
already made up as to the equity of the matter. They exer- 
cised the right of making suspicious individuals leave the 
county.^ They also at times became censors of morals, and 
interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs 
for which a more refined and elaborate system of jurispru- 
dence would have provided only cumbersome and inadequate 
remedies. Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a 
certain man is ordered "to return to his family and demean 
himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court 
that he had left his wife and took up with another woman." 
From the character of the judges who made the decision, it 
is safe to presume that the delinquent either obeyed it or else 
promptly fled to the Indians for safety.^ This fleeing to the 
Indians, by the way, was a feat often performed by the worst 
criminals — for the renegade, the man who had "painted his 
face" and deserted those of his own color, was a being as well 
known as he was abhorred and despised on the border, where 
such a deed was held to be the one unpardonable crime. 

So much for the way in which the whites kept order among 
themselves. The second part of their task, the adjustment of 
their relations with their red neighbors, was scarcely less im- 

*A right the exercise of which is of course susceptible to great abuse, 
but, nevertheless, is often absolutely necessary to the well-being of a 
frontier community. In almost every case where I have personally 
known it exercised, the character of the individual ordered off justified 
the act. * Allison's Address. 



154 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

portant. Early in 1772, Virginia made a treaty with the 
Cherokee nation which estabhshed as the boundary between 
them a Hne running west from White Top Mountain in lati- 
tude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes.^ Immediately after- 
ward the agent ^ of the British Government among the Chero- 
kees ordered the Watauga settlers to instantly leave their 
lands. They defied him, and refused to move ; but feeling the 
insecurity of their tenure they deputed two commissioners, of 
whom Robertson was one, to make a treaty with the Chero- 
kees. This was successfully accomplished, the Indians leas- 
ing to the associated settlers all the lands on the Watauga 
waters for the space of eight years, in consideration of about 
six thousand dollars' worth of blankets, paint, muskets, and 
the like.^ The amount advanced was reimbursed to the men 
advancing it by the sale of the lands in small parcels to new 
settlers,^ for the time of the lease.^ 

After the lease was signed, a day was appointed on which 
to hold a great race, as well as wrestling-matches and other 
sports, at Watauga. Not only many whites from the various 
settlements, but also a number of Indians, came to see or take 
part in the sports ; and all went well until the evening, when 
some lawless men from Wolf Hills, who had been lurking in 
the woods roundabout,^ killed an Indian, whereat his fellows 
left the spot in great anger. 

The settlers now saw themselves threatened with a bloody 

* Ramsey, 109. Putnam says 36° 35'. 

'Alexander Cameron. 'Haywood, 43. 

* Meanwhile Carter's Valley, then believed to lie in Virginia, had been 
settled^ by Virginians ; the Indians roblied a trader's store, and indemnified 
the owners by giving them land, at the treaty of .Sycamore Shoals. This 
land was leased in job lots to settlers, who, however, kept possession 
without paying when they found it lay in North Carolina. 

° A similar but separate lease was made by the settlers on the Nolichucky, 
who acquired a beautiful and fertile valley in exchange for the mer- 
chandise carried on the back of a single pack-horse. Among the whites 
themselves transfers of land were made in very simple forms and con- 
veyed not the fee simple but merely the grantor's claim. 

Haywood says they were named Crabtree ; Putnam hints that they 
had lost a brother when Boone's party was attacked and his son killed ; 
but the attack on Boone did not take place till over a year after this time. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 155 

and vindictive Indian war, and were plunged in terror and 
despair; yet they were rescued by the address and daring of 
Robertson. Leaving the others to build a formidable palisaded 
fort, under the leadership of Sevier, Robertson set off alone 
through the woods and followed the great war trace down to 
the Cherokee towns. His mission was one of the greatest 
peril, for there was imminent danger that the justly angered 
savages would take his life. But he was a man who never 
rushed heedlessly into purposeless peril, and never flinched from 
a danger which there was an object in encountering. His quiet, 
resolute fearlessness doubtless impressed the savages to whom 
he went, and helped to save his life; moreover, the Cherokees 
knew him, trusted his word, and were probably a little overawed 
by a certain air of command to which all men that were thrown 
in contact with him bore witness. His ready tact and knowl- 
edge of Indian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs 
and warriors to meet him in council, assured them of the anger 
and sorrow with which all the Watauga people viewed the 
murder, which had undoubtedly been committed by some out- 
sider, and wound up by declaring his determination to try 
to have the wrong-doer arrested and punished according to 
his crime. The Indians, already pleased with his embassy, 
finally consented to pass the affair over and not take vengeance 
upon innocent men. Then the daring backwoods diplomatist, 
well pleased with the success of his mission, returned to the 
anxious little community. 

The incident, taken in connection with the plundering of a 
store kept by two whites in Holston Valley at the same time, 
and the unprovoked assault on Boone's party in Powell's Valley 
a year later, shows the extreme difficulty of preventing the 
worst men of each color from wantonly attacking the inno- 
cent. There was hardly a peaceable red or law-abiding white 
who could not recite injuries he had received from members 
of the opposite race; and his sense of the wrongs he had suf- 
fered, as well as the general frontier indifference to crimes 
committed against others, made him slow in punishing sim- 



156 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ilar outrages by his own people. The Watauga settlers dis- 
countenanced wrong being done the Indians, and tried to atone 
for it, but they never hunted the offenders down with the neces- 
sary mercilessness that alone could have prevented a repetition 
of their ofifenses. Similarly, but to an even greater degree, 
the good Indians shielded the bad.^ 

For several years after they made their lease with the Chero- 
kees the men of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian 
neighbors. They had to fear nothing more than a drought, 
a freshet, a forest-fire, or an unusually deep snowfall if hunting 
on the mountains in midwinter. They lived in peace, hunting 
and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and rearing many 
healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the stub- 
born wilderness comfortable homes, filled with plenty. The 
stumps were drawn out of the clearings, and other grains were 
sown besides corn. Beef, pork, and mutton were sometimes 
placed on the table, besides the more common venison, bear 
meat, and wild turkey. The women wove good clothing, the 
men procured good food, the log cabins, if homely and rough, 
yet gave ample warmth and shelter. The families throve, and 
life was happy, even though varied with toil, danger, and 
hardship. Books were few, and it was some years before 
the first church — Presbyterian, of course — was started in the 
region.' The backwoods Presbyterians managed their church 
affairs much as they did their civil government : each congre- 
gation appointed a committee to choose ground, to build a 
meeting-house, to collect the minister's salary, and to pay all 
charges, by taxing the members proportionately for the same, 
the committee being required to turn in a full account and 

* Even La Rochcfoucauld-Liancourt (8, 95), who loathed the backwoods- 
men — few polished Europeans being able to see any but the repulsive 
side of frontier character, a side certainly very often prominent — also 
speaks of the tendency of the worst Indians to go to the frontier to rob 
and murder. 

'Salem Church was founded (Allison, 8) in 1777, by Samuel Doak, a 
Princeton graduate, and a man of sound learning, who also at the same 
time started Washington College, the first real institution of learning 
south of the Alleghanies. 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 157 

receive instructions at a general session or meeting held twice 
every year.^ 

Thus the Watauga folk were the first Americans who, as 
a separate body, moved into the wilderness to hew out dwell- 
ings for themselves and their children, trusting only to their 
own shrewd heads, stout hearts, and strong arms, unhelped and 
unhampered by the power nominally their sovereign." They 
built up a commonwealth which had many successors ; they 
showed that the frontiersmen could do their work unassisted; 
for they not only proved that they were made of stuff stern 
enough to hold its own against outside pressure of any sort, 
but they also made it evident that having won the land they 
were competent to govern both it and themselves. They were 
the first to do what the whole nation has since done. It has 
often been said that we owe all our success to our surround- 
ings ; that any race with our opportunities could have done as 
well as we have done. Undoubtedly our opportunities have 
been great; undoubtedly we have often and lamentably failed 
in taking advantage of them. But what nation ever has done 
all that was possible with the chances offered it? The Span- 
iards, the Portuguese, and the French, not to speak of the 
Russians in Siberia, have all enjoyed, and yet have failed to 
make good use of, the same advantages which we have turned 
to good account. The truth is, that in starting a new nation 
in a new country, as we have done, while there are exceptional 
chances to be taken advantage of, there are also exceptional 
dangers and difficulties to be overcome. None but heroes can 
succeed wholly in the work. It is a good thing for us at 
times to compare what we have done with what we could have 
done had we been better and wiser; it may make us try in 
the future to raise our abilities to the level of our opportuni- 
ties. Looked at absolutely, we must frankly acknowledge that 
we have fallen very far short indeed of the high ideal we 
should have reached. Looked at relatively, it must also be 

' "Annals of Augusta," 21. * See Note, p. 158. 



158 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

said that we have done better than any other nation or race 
working under our conditions. 

The Watauga settlers outhned in advance the nation's work. 
They tamed the rugged and shaggy wilderness, they bid defiance 
to outside foes, and they successfully solved the difficult prob- 
lem of self-government. 

NOTE 

Recently one or two histories of the times and careers of Robertson 
and Sevier have been published by "Edmund Kirke/' Mr. James R. 
Gilmore. They are charmingly written, and are of real service as call- 
ing- attention to a neglected portion of our history and making it 
interesting. But they entirely fail to discriminate between the prov- 
inces of history and fiction. It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. 
Gilmore did not employ his powers in writing an avowed historical 
novel, treating of the events he discusses ; such a work from him 
would have a permanent value, like John P. Kennedy's "Horseshoe 
Robinson." In their present form his works cannot be accepted even 
as offering material on which to form a judgment, except in so far 
as they contain repetitions of statements given by Ramsey or Putnam. 
I say this with real reluctance, for my relations with Mr. Gilmore 
personally have been pleasant. I was at the outset prepossessed in 
favor of his books ; but as soon as I came to study them I found that 
(except for what was drawn from the printed Tennessee State his- 
tories) they were extremely untrustworthy. Oral tradition has a cer- 
tain value of its own, if used with great discretion and intelligence; 
but it is rather startling to find any one blandly accepting as gospel 
alleged oral traditions gathered one hundred and twenty-five years 
after the event, especially when they relate to such subjects as the 
losses and numbers of Indian war-parties. No man with the slightest 
knowledge of frontiersmen or frontier life could commit such a mis- 
take. If any one wishes to get at the value of oral tradition of an 
Indian fight a century old, let him go out West and collect the stories 
of Custer's battle, which took place only a dozen years ago. I think 
I have met or heard of fifty "solitary survivors" of Custer's defeat; 
and I could collect certainly a dozen complete accounts of both it and 
Reno's fight, each believed by a goodly number of men, and no two 
relating the story in an even appro.ximately similar fashion. Mr. 
Gilmore apparently accepts all such accounts indiscriminately, and 
embodies them in his narrative without even a reference to his author- 
ities. I particularize one or two out of very many instances in the 
chapters dealing with the Cherokee wars. 

Hooks founded upon an indiscriminate acceptance of any and all 
such traditions or alleged traditions are a little absurd, unless, as 
already said, they are avowedly merely historic novds. when they may 



THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH 159 

be both useful and interesting-. I am obliged to say with genuine regret, 
after careful examination of Mr. Gilmore's books, that I cannot accept 
any single unsupported statement they contain as even requiring an 
examination into its probability. I would willingly pass them by with- 
out comment, did I not fear that my silence might be construed into 
an acceptance of their truth. Moreover, I notice that some writers, 
like the editors of the "Cyclopaedia of American Biography," seem 
inclined to take the volumes seriously. 



CHAPTER VIII 
LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 

1774 

ON the eve of the Revolution, in 1774, the frontiers 
men had planted themselves firmly among the Alle- 
ghanies. Directly w^est of them lay the untenanted 
wilderness, traversed only by the v^ar-parties of the red men 
and the hunting-parties of both reds and v^hites. No settlers 
had yet penetrated it, and until they did so there could be 
within its borders no chance of race warfare, unless we call 
by that name the unchronicled and unending contest in which, 
now and then, some solitary white woodsman slew, or was 
slain by, his painted foe. But in the Southwest and the North- 
west alike, the area of settlement already touched the home- 
lands of the tribes, and hence the horizon was never quite 
free from the cloud of threatening Indian war ; yet for the 
moment the Southwest was at peace, for the Cherokees were 
still friendly. 

It was in the Northwest that the danger of collision was 
most imminent ; for there the whites and Indians had wronged 
one another for a generation, and their interests were, at the 
time, clashing more directly than ever. Much the greater 
part of the Western frontier was held or claimed by Virginia, 
whose royal governor was, at the time. Lord Dunmore. He 
was an ambitious, energetic man, who held his allegiance as 
being due first to the Crown, but who, nevertheless, was al- 
ways eager to champion the cause of Virginia as against 
either the Indians or her sister colonies. The short but fierce 
and eventful struggle that now broke out was fought wholly 

160 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR i6i 

by Virginians, and was generally known by the name of Lord 
Dunmore's war, 

Virginia, under her charter, claimed that her boundaries 
ran across to the South Seas, to the Pacific Ocean. The King 
of Britain had graciously granted her the right to take so 
much of the continent as lay within these lines, provided she 
could win it from the Indians, French, and Spaniards; and 
provided also she could prevent herself from being ousted by 
the Crown, or by some of the other colonies. A number of 
grants had been made with the like large liberality, and it was 
found that they sometimes conflicted with one another. The 
consequence was that while the boundaries were well marked 
near the coast, where they separated Virginia from the long- 
settled regions of Maryland and North Carolina, they became 
exceeding vague and indefinite the moment they touched the 
mountains. Even at the South this produced confusion, and 
induced the settlers of the upper Holston to consider them- 
selves as Virginians, not Carolinians; but at the North the 
effect was still more confusing, and nearly resulted in bring- 
ing about an intercolonial war between Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia. 

The Virginians claimed all of extreme western Pennsylvania, 
especially Fort Pitt and the valley of the Monongahela, and, 
in 1774, proceeded boldly to exercise jurisdiction therein.^ In- 
deed, a strong party among the settlers favored the Virginian 
claim; whereas it would have been quite impossible to arouse 
anywhere in Virginia the least feeling in support of a similar 
claim on behalf of Pennsylvania. The borderers had a great 
contempt for the sluggish and timid government of the Quaker 
province, which was very lukewarm in protecting them in 
their rights — or, indeed, in punishing them when they did 
wrong to others. In fact, it seems probable that they would 
have declared for Virginia even more strongly, had it not 
been for the very reason that their feeling of independence 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 454. Report of Pennsyl- 
vania Commissioners, June 27, 1774. 



i62 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

was so surly as to make them suspicious of all forms of con- 
trol ; and they therefore objected almost as much to Virginian 
as Pennsylvanian rule, and regarded the outcome of the dis- 
pute with a certain indifference.^ 

For a time in the early part of 1774 there seemed quite 
as much likelihood of the Virginians being drawn into a fight 
with the Pennsylvanians as with the Shawnees. While the 
Pennsylvanian commissioners were trying to come to an 
agreement concerning the boundaries with Lord Dunmore, 
the representatives of the two contesting parties at Fort Pitt 
were on the verge of actual collision. The earl's agent in the 
disputed territory was a Captain John Conolly,^ a man of 
violent temper and bad character. He embodied the men fa- 
vorable to his side as a sort of Virginian militia, with which 
he not only menaced both hostile and friendly Indians, but the 
adherents of the Pennsylvanian government as well. He 
destroyed their houses, killed their cattle and hogs, impressed 
their horses, and finally so angered them that they threatened 
to take refuge in the stockade at Fort Pitt and defy him to 
open war — although even in the midst of these quarrels with 
Conolly their loyalty to the Quaker State was somewhat doubt- 
ful.3 

The Virginians were the only foes the Western Indians 
really dreaded; for their backwoodsmen were of warlike tem- 
per, and had learned to fight effectively in the forest. The In- 
dians styled them Long Knives; or, to be more exact, they 
called them collectively the "Big Knife." * There have been 
many accounts given of the origin of this name, some ascrib- 
ing it to the long knives worn by the hunters and backwoods- 

* Maryland was also involved, along her western frontier, in border 
difficulties with her neighbors ; the first we hear of the Cresap family 
is their having engaged in a real skirmish with the Pennsylvanian authori- 
ties. See also "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, 547. 

'"American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, 394, 449, 469, etc. He was 
generally called Dr. Conolly. 

'See ibid., 463, 471, etc., especially St. Clair's letters, passim. 

* In most of the original treaties, "talks," etc., preserved in the Archives 
of the State Department where the translation is exact, the word "Big 
Knife" is used. 



I 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 163 

men generally, others to the fact that some of the noted Vir- 
ginian fighters in their early skirmishes were armed with 
swords. At any rate, the title was accepted by all the Indians 
as applying to their most determined foes among the colonists ; 
and, finally, after we had become a nation, was extended so as 
to apply to Americans generally. 

The war that now ensued was not general. The Six Nations, 
as a whole, took no part in it, while Pennsylvania also stood 
aloof; indeed, at one time it was proposed that the Pennsyl- 
vanians and Iroquois should jointly endeavor to mediate be- 
tween the combatants.^ The struggle was purely between the 
Virginians and the northwestern Indians, 

The interests of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians con- 
flicted not only in respect to the ownership of the land, but also 
in respect to the policy to be pursued regarding the Indians. 
The former were armed colonists, whose interest it was to 
get actual possession of the soil; " whereas in Pennsylvania the 
Indian trade was very important and lucrative, and the numer- 
ous traders to the Indian towns were anxious that the red- 
skins should remain in undisturbed enjoyment of their forests, 
and that no white man should be allowed to come among them ; 
moreover, so long as they were able to make heavy profits 
they were utterly indifferent to the well-being of the white fron- 
tiersmen, and in return incurred the suspicion and hatred of 
the latter. The Virginians accused the traders of being the 
main cause of the difficulty,^ asserting that they sometimes in- 
cited the Indians to outrages, and always, even in the midst 
of hostilities, kept them supplied with guns and ammunition, 
and even bought from them the horses that they had stolen on 
their plundering expeditions against the Virginian border.* 
These last accusations were undoubtedly justified, at least in 
great part, by the facts. The interests of the white trader 
from Pennsylvania and of the white settler from Virginia were 

* Letter of John Penn, June 28, 1774. "American Archives," 4th Series, 
vol. IV. 

Ihid., 465. * Ihxd., 722. * Ibid., 872. 



i64 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

so far from being identical that they were usually diametrically 
opposite. 

The northwestern Indians had been nominally at peace with 
the whites for ten years, since the close of Bouquet's campaign. 
But Bouquet had inflicted a very slight punishment upon them, 
and in concluding an unsatisfactory peace had caused them to 
make but a partial reparation for the wrongs they had done.^ 
They remained haughty and insolent, irritated rather than awed 
by an ineffective chastisement, and their young men made fre- 
quent forays on the frontier. Each of the ten years of nom- 
inal peace saw plenty of bloodshed. Recently they had been 
seriously alarmed by the tendency of the whites to encroach 
on the great hunting-ground south of the Ohio ; " for here and 
there hunters or settlers were already beginning to build cabins 
along the course of that stream. The cession by the Iroquois 
of these same hunting-grounds, at the treaty of Fort Stan- 
wix, while it gave the whites a colorable title, merely angered 
the northwestern Indians. Half a century earlier they would 
hardly have dared dispute the power of the Six Nations to do 
what they chose with any land that could be reached by their 
war-parties; but in 1774 they felt quite able to hold their 
own against their old oppressors, and had no intention of ac- 
quiescing in any arrangement the latter might make, unless 
it was also clearly to their own advantage. 

In the decade before Lord Dunmore's war there had been 
much mutual wrong-doing between the northwestern Indians 
and the Virginian borderers; but on the whole the latter had 
occupied the position of being sinned against more often than 
that of sinning. The chief offense of the whites was that 
they trespassed upon uninhabited lands, which they forthwith 
proceeded to cultivate, instead of merely roaming over them 
to hunt the game and butcher one another. Doubtless occa- 
sional white men would murder an Indian if they got a chance, 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 1015. 

'McAfee MSS. This is the point especially insisted on by Cornstalk in 
his speech to the adventurers in 1773; he would fight before seeing the 
whites drive off the game. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 165 

and the traders almost invariably cheated the tribesmen. But, 
as a whole, the traders were Indian rather than white in their 
sympathies, and the whites rarely made forays against their 
foes avowedly for horses and plunder, while the Indians on 
their side were continually indulging in such inroads. Every 
year parties of young red warriors crossed the Ohio to plunder 
the outlying farms, burn down the buildings, scalp the in- 
mates, and drive off the horses.^ Year by year the exaspera- 
tion of the borderers grew greater and the tale of the wrongs 
they had to avenge longer.^ Occasionally, they took a brutal 
and ill-judged vengeance, which usually fell on innocent In- 
dians,^ and raised up new foes for the whites. The savages 
grew continually more hostile, and in the fall of 1773 their 
attacks became so frequent that it was evident a general out- 
break was at hand ; eleven people were murdered in the county 
of Fincastle alone.'* The Shawnees were the leaders in all 
these outrages ; but the outlaw bands, such as the Mingos and 
Cherokees, were as bad, and parties of Wyandots and Dela- 
wares, as well as of the various Miami and Wabash tribes, 
joined them. 

Thus the spring of 1774 opened with everything ripe for an 
explosion. The Virginian borderers were fearfully exasper- 
ated, and ready to take vengeance upon any Indians, whether 
peaceful or hostile; while the Shawnees and Mingos, on their 
side, were arrogant and overbearing, and yet alarmed at the 
continual advance of the whites. The headstrong rashness of 
Conolly, who was acting as Lord Dunmore's lieutenant on the 
border, and who was equally willing to plunge into a war with 

^ In the McAfee MSS., as already quoted, there is an account of the 
Shawnee war-party whom the McAfees encountered in 1773 returning 
from a successful horse-stealing expedition. 

' "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, 872. Dunmore, in his speech, 
enumerates nineteen men, women, and children, who had been killed by 
the Indians in 1771, '72, and '73, and these were but a small fraction of 
the whole. "This was before a drop of Shawnee blood was shed." 

^ "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," p. 262, gives an example that happened 
in 1772. 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I. Letter of Colonel William 
Preston, August 13, 1774. 



i66 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Pennsylvania or the Shawnees, served as a firebrand to ignite 
this maos of tinder. The borderers were anxious for a war; 
and Lord Dunmore was not incHned to balk them. He was 
ambitious of glory, and probably thought that in the midst 
of the growing difficulties between the mother country and 
the colonies, it would be good policy to distract the Virginians' 
minds by an Indian war, which, if he conducted it to a suc- 
cessful conclusion, might strengthen his own position.^ 

There were on the border at the moment three or four men 
whose names are so intimately bound up with the history of 
this war that they deserve a brief mention. One was Michael 
Cresap, a Maryland frontiersman, who had come to the banks 
of the Ohio with the purpose of making a home for his fam- 
ily,^ He was of the regular pioneer type: a good woodsman, 
sturdy and brave, a fearless fighter, devoted to his friends and 
his country; but also, when his blood was heated and his sav- 

*Many local historians, including Brantz Mayer (Logan and Cresap, 
p. 85), ascribe to the earl treacherous motives. Brantz Mayer puts it thus: 
"It was probably Lord Dunmore's desire to incite a war which would 
arouse and band the savages of the West, so that in the anticipated strug- 
gle with the united colonies the British home-interest might ultimately 
avail itself of these children of the forest as ferocious and formidable 
allies in the onslaught on the Americans." This is much too futile a 
theory to need serious discussion. The war was of the greatest advan- 
tage to the American cause, for it kept the northwestern Indians off our 
hands for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle ; and had Lord 
Dunmore been the far-seeing and malignant being that this theory sup- 
poses, it would have been impossible for him not also to foresee that such 
a result was absolutely inevitable. There is no reason whatever to sup- 
pose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians ; he deserved their 
gratitude, and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery 
against him were afterthoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar 
rancor, unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced. When 
the Revolutionary War broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so 
many other British officials, advocated the most outrageous measures to 
put down the insurgent colonists. 

* See Brantz Mayer, p. 86, for a very proper attack on those historians 
who stigmatize as land-jobbers and speculators the perfectly honest set- 
tlers, whose encroachments on the Indian hunting-grounds were so bit- 
terly resented by the savages. Such attacks are mere pieces of sentimental 
injustice. The settlers were perfectly right in feeling that they had a 
right to settle on the vast stretches of unoccupied ground, however wrong 
some of their individual deeds may have been. But Mayer, following 
Jacob's "Life of Cresap," undoubtedly paints his hero in altogether too 
bright colors. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 167 

age instincts fairly roused, inclined to regard any red man, 
whether hostile or friendly, as a being who should be slain on 
sight. Nor did he condemn the brutal deeds done by others 
on innocent Indians. 

The next was a man named Greathouse, of whom it is 
enough to know that, together with certain other men whose 
names have for the most part, by a merciful chance, been for- 
gotten,^ he did a deed such as could only be committed by in- 
human and cowardly scoundrels. 

The other two actors in this tragedy were both Indians, and 
were both men of much higher stamp. One was Cornstalk, 
the Shawnee chief ; a far-sighted seer, gloomily conscious of 
the impending ruin of his race, a great orator, a mighty war- 
rior; a man who knew the value of his word and prized his 
honor, and who fronted death with quiet, disdainful heroism ; 
and yet a fierce, cruel, and treacherous savage to those with 
whom he was at enmity, a killer of women and children whom 
we first hear of in Pontiac's war, as joining in the massacre 
of unarmed and peaceful settlers who had done him no wrong, 
and who thought that he was friendly.^ The other was Logan, 
an Iroquois warrior, who lived at that time away from the 
bulk of his people, but who was a man of note — in the loose 
phraseology of the border, a chief or head man — among the 
outlying parties of Senecas and Mingos, and the fragments 
of broken tribes that dwelt along the upper Ohio. He was a 
man of splendid appearance : over six feet high, straight as 
a spear-shaft, with a countenance as open as it was brave and 
manly,^ until the wrongs he endured stamped on it an ex- 
pression of gloomy ferocity. He had always been the friend 
of the white man, and had been noted particularly for his 
kindness and gentleness to children. Up to this time he had 
lived at peace with the borderers, for though some of his kin 

^ Sappington, Tomlinson, and Baker were the names of three of his 
fellow miscreants. See Jefferson MSS. 

"At Greenbriar. See "Narrative of Captain John Stewart," an actor in 
the war, Magazine of American History, vol. I, p. 671. 

'Loudon's "Indian Narratives," II, p. 223. 



i68 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

had been massacred by them years before, he had forgiven the 
deed — perhaps not unmindful of the fact that others of his 
kin had been concerned in still more bloody massacres of the 
whites. A skilled marksman and mighty hunter, of com- 
manding dignity, who treated all men with a grave courtesy 
that exacted the same treatment in return, he was greatly 
liked and respected by all the white hunters and frontiersmen 
whose friendship and respect were worth having; they ad- 
mired him for his dexterity and prowess, and they loved him 
for his straightforward honesty, and his noble loyalty to his 
friends. One of these old pioneer hunters has left on record ^ 
the statement that he deemed "Logan the best specimen of hu- 
manity he ever met with, either white or red." Such was Lo- 
gan before the evil days came upon him. 

Early in the spring the outlying settlers began again to suffer 
from the deeds of straggling Indians. Horses were stolen, 
one or two murders were committed, the inhabitants of the 
more lonely cabins fled to the forts, and the backwoodsmen 
began to threaten fierce vengeance. On April i6th, three 
traders in the employ of a man named Butler were attacked by 
some of the outlaw Cherokees, one killed, another wounded, 
and their goods plundered. Immediately after this Conolly 
issued an open letter, commanding the backwoodsmen to hold 
themselves in readiness to repel any attack by the Indians, as 
the Shawnees were hostile. Such a letter from Lord Dun- 
more's lieutenant amounted to a declaration of war, and there 
were sure to be plenty of backwoodsmen who would put a very 
liberal interpretation upon the order given them to repel an 
attack. Its effects were seen instantly. All the borderers pre- 
pared for war. Cresap was near Wheeling at the time, with 
a band of hunters and scouts — fearless men, who had adopted 
many of the ways of the redskins, in addition to their method 
of fighting. As soon as they received Conolly 's letter they 
proceeded to declare war in the regular Indian style, calling 
a council, planting the warpost, and going through other sav- 

* See "American Pioneer," I, p. 189. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 169 

age ceremonies/ and eagerly waited for a chance to attack 
their foes. 

Unfortunately the first stroke fell on friendly Indians. The 
trader, Butler, spoken of above, in order to recover some of 
the peltries of which he had been robbed by the Cherokees, 
had sent a canoe with two friendly Shawnees toward the place 
of the massacre. On the 27th, Cresap and his followers am- 
bushed these men near Captina, and killed and scalped them. 
Some of the better backwoodsmen strongly protested against 
this outrage;^ but the mass of them were excited and angered 
by the rumor of Indian hostilities, and the brutal and disor- 
derly side of frontier character was for the moment upper- 
most. They threatened to kill whoever interfered with them, 
cursing the "damned traders" as being worse than the In- 
dians,^ while Cresap boasted of the murder and never said a 
word in condemnation of the still worse deeds that followed 
it."* The next day he again led out his men and attacked an- 
other party of Shawnees, who had been trading near Pitts- 
burg, killed one and wounded two others, one of the whites 
being also hurt.^ 

Among the men who were with Cresap at this time was 
a young Virginian, who afterward played a brilliant part in 
the history of the West, who was for ten years the leader of 
the bold spirits of Kentucky, and who rendered the whole 
United States signal and effective service by one of his deeds 
in the Revolutionary War. This was George Rogers Clark, 
then twenty-one years old.*^ He was of good family, and had 

* Letter of George Rogers Clark, June 17, 1798. In Jefferson MSS., 
5th Series, vol. I (preserved in Archives of State Department at Wash- 
ington ) . 

* Witness the testimony of one of the most gallant Indian fighters of the 
border, who was in Wheeling at the time; letter of Colonel Ebenezer Zane, 
February 4, 1800, in Jefferson MSS. 

'Jefferson MSS. Deposition of John Gibson, April 4, 1800. 

* Ibid. Deposition of William Huston, April 19, 1798; also depositions 
of Samuel McKee, etc. 

° "American Archives," 4th Series, vo\ I, p. 468. Letter of Devereux 
Smith, June 10, 1774. Gibson's letter. Also Jefferson MSS. 

"Historical Magadnc, I, p. 168. Born in Albemarle County, Va., 
November 19, 1752. 



lyo THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

been fairly well educated, as education went in colonial days; 
but from his childhood he had been passionately fond of the 
wild roving life of the woods. He was a great hunter; and, 
like so many other young colonial gentlemen of good birth and 
bringing-up and adventurous temper, he followed the haz- 
ardous profession of a backwoods surveyor. With chain and 
compass, as well as axe and rifle, he penetrated the far places 
of the wilderness, the lonely, dangerous regions where every 
weak man inevitably succumbed to the manifold perils en- 
countered, but where the strong and far-seeing were able to 
lay the foundations of fame and fortune. He possessed high 
daring, unflinching courage, passions which he could not con- 
trol, and a frame fitted to stand any strain of fatigue or hard- 
ship. He was a square-built, thick-set man, with high, broad 
forehead, sandy hair, and unquailing blue eyes that looked out 
from under heavy, shaggy brows. ^ 

Clark had taken part with Cresap in his assault upon the 
second party of Shawnees. On the following day the whole 
band of whites prepared to march off and attack Logan's 
camp at Yellow Creek, some fifty miles distant. After going 
some miles they began to feel ashamed of their mission; call- 
ing a halt, they discussed the fact that the camp they were 
preparing to attack consisted exclusively ol friendly Indians, 
and mainly of women and children; and forthwith abandoned 
their proposed trip and returned home. They were true bor- 
derers — brave, self-reliant, loyal to their friends, and good- 
hearted when their worst instincts were not suddenly aroused ; 
but the sight of bloodshed maddened them as if they had been 
so many wolves. Wrongs stirred to the depths their moody 
tempers and filled them with a brutal longing for indiscrimi- 
nate revenge. When goaded by memories of evil, or when 
swayed by swift, fitful gusts of fury, the uncontrolled violence 
of their passions led them to commit deeds whose inhuman 

* "Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny," with an introductory 
memoir by William Tl. Denny (Publication of the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania), Philadelphia, i860, p. 216. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 171 

barbarity almost equalled, though it could never surpass, that 
shown by the Indians themselves.^ 

But Logan's people did not profit by Cresap's change of 
heart. On the last day of April a small party of men, women, 
and children, including almost all of Logan's kin, left his 
camp and crossed the river to visit Greathouse, as had been 
their custom; for he made a trade of selling rum to the sav- 
ages, though Cresap had notified him to stop. The whole 
party were plied with liquor and became helplessly drunk, in 
which condition Greathouse and his associated criminals fell 
on and massacred them, nine souls in all.^ It was an inhuman 
and revolting deed, which should consign the names of the 
perpetrators to eternal infamy. 

At once the frontier was in a blaze, and the Indians girded 
themselves for revenge. The Mingos sent out runners to the 
other tribes, telling of the butchery, and calling on all the red 
men to join together for immediate and bloody vengeance.^ 
They confused the two massacres, attributing both to Cresap, 
whom they well knew as a warrior ; * and their women for long 
afterward scared the children into silence by threatening them 
with Cresap's name as with that of a monster.^ They had 

*The Cresap apologists, including even Brantz Mayer, dwell on Cresap's 
nobleness in not massacring Logan's family ! It was certainly to his credit 
that he did not do so, but it does not speak very well for him that he 
should have even entertained the thought. He was doubtless, on the whole, 
a brave, good-hearted man — quite as good as the average borderer; but 
nevertheless apt to be drawn into deeds that were the reverse of credit- 
able. Mayer's book has merit ; but he certainly paints Logan too black 
and Cresap too white,_ and (see Note III, p. 232) is utterly wrong as to 
Logan's speech. He is right in recognizing the fact that in the war, as 
a whole, justice was on the side of the frontiersmen. 

^Devereux Smith's letter. Some of the evil-doers afterward tried to 
palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan's brother, when drunk, 
insulted a white man, and that the other Indians were at the time on the 
point of executing an attack upon them. The last statement is self-evi- 
dently false ; for had such been the case, the Indians would, of course, 
never have let some of their women and children put themselves in the 
power of the whites, and get helplessly drunk; and, anyhow, the allega- 
tions of such brutal and cowardly murderers are entirely unworthy of 
acceptance, unless backed up by outside evidence. 

^Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, vol. I, Heckewelder's letter. 

* Jefferson MSS., Ibid. Deposition of Colonel James Smith, May 25, 1798. 

^ Ibid., Heckewelder's letter. 



172 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

indeed been brutally wronged ; yet it must be remembered that 
they themselves were the first aggressors. They had cause- 
lessly murdered and robbed many whites, and now their sins 
had recoiled on the heads of the innocent of their own race. 
The conflict could not in any event have been delayed long; 
the frontiersmen were too deeply and too justly irritated. These 
particular massacres, however discreditable to those taking part 
in them, were the occasions, not the causes, of the war ; and 
though they cast a dark shade on the conduct of the whites, 
they do not relieve the red men from the charge of having 
committed earlier, more cruel, and quite as wanton outrages. 

Conolly, an irritable but irresolute man, was appalled by 
the storm he had helped raise. He meanly disclaimed all re- 
sponsibility for Cresap's action,'-^ and deposed him from his 
command of rangers ; to which, however, he was soon restored 
by Lord Dunmore. Both the earl and his lieutenant, however, 
united in censuring severely Greathouse's deed.- Conolly, 
throughout May, held a series of councils with the Dela- 
wares and Iroquois, in which he disclaimed and regretted the 
outrages and sought for peace. ^ To one of these councils 
the Delaware chief, Killbuck, with other warriors, sent a "talk," 
or "speech in writing,"'* disavowing the deeds of one of their 
own parties of young braves, who had gone on the war-path; 
and another Delaware chief made a very sensible speech, say- 
ing that it was unfortunately inevitable that bad men on both 
sides should commit wrongs, and that the cooler heads should 
not be led away by acts due to the rashness and folly of a 
few. But the Shawnees showed no such spirit. On the con- 
trary, they declared for war outright, and sent a bold defiance 
to the Virginians, at the same time telling Conolly plainly that 
he lied. Their message is noteworthy, because, after express- 
ing a firm belief that the Virginian leader could control his war- 
riors and stop the outrages if he wished, it added that the 
Shawnee head men were able to do the like with their own 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 475. 

"Ibtd.^p.iois. *Ibid.,v».47S. * Ibid.,p.4iS. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 173 

men when they required it. This last allegation took away 
all shadow of excuse from the Shawnees for not having stopped 
the excesses of which their young braves had been guilty dur- 
ing the past few years. 

Though Conolly showed signs of flinching, his master the 
earl had evidently no thought of shrinking from the contest. 
He at once began actively to prepare to attack his foes, and 
the Virginians backed him up heartily, though the Royal Gov- 
ernment, instead of supporting him, censured him in strong 
terms, and accused the whites of being the real aggressors and 
the authors of the war.^ 

In any event, it would have been out of the question to avoid 
a contest at so late a date. Immediately after the murders in 
the end of April, the savages crossed the frontier in small 
bands. Soon all the back country was involved in the un- 
speakable horrors of a bloody Indian war, with its usual 
accompaniments of burning houses, tortured prisoners, and 
ruined families ; the men being killed and the women and chil- 
dren driven off to a horrible captivity.- The Indians declared 
that they were not at war with Pennsylvania,^ and the latter 
in turn adopted an attitude of neutrality, openly disclaiming 
any share in the wrong that had been done, and assuring the 
Indians that it rested solely on the shoulders of the Virgin- 
ians.'* Indeed, the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania traders 
from some hostile Mingos, while the Pennsylvania militia 
shielded a party of Shawnees from some of Conolly's men;^ 
and the Virginians, irritated by what they considered an aban- 
donment of the white cause, were bent on destroying the Penn- 
sylvania fur trade with the Indians. ** Nevertheless, some of 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 774. Letter of the Earl of 
Dartmouth, September 10, 1774. A sufficient answer, by the way, to the 
absurd charge that Dunmore brought on the war in consequence of some 
mysterious plan of the Home Government to embroil the Americans with 
the savages. It is not at all improbable that the Crown advisers were not 
particularly displeased at seeing the attention of the Americans distracted 
by a war with the Indians ; but this is the utmost that can be alleged. 

=■ Ibid., p. 808. ' Ibid., p. 478. * Ibid., p. 506. 

" Ibid., p. 474. * Ibid., p. 549. 



174 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the bands of young braves who were out on the war-path failed 
to discriminate between white friends and foes, and a number 
of Pennsylvanians fell victims to their desire for scalps and 
their ignorance or indifference as to whom they were at war 
with.i 

The panic along the Pennsylvania frontier was terrible ; the 
out settlers fled back to the interior across the mountains, or 
gathered in numbers to defend themselves.- On the Virginian 
frontier, where the real attack was delivered, the panic was 
more justifiable; for terrible ravages were committed, and the 
inhabitants were forced to gather together in their forted vil- 
lages and could no longer cultivate their farms, except by 
stealth.^ Instead of being cowed, however, the backwoods- 
men clamored to be led against their foes, and made most urgent 
appeals for powder and lead, of which there was a great scar- 
city.^ 

The confusion was heightened by the anarchy in which the 
government of the northwestern district had been thrown in 
consequence of the quarrel concerning the jurisdiction. The 
inhabitants were doubtful as to which colony really had a right 
to their allegiance, and many of the frontier officials were 
known to be double-faced, professing allegiance to both gov- 
ernments.^ When the Pennsylvanians raised a corps of a 
hundred rangers there almost ensued a civil war among the 
whites, for the Virginians were fearful that the movement 
was really aimed against them.^ Of course, the march of 
events gradually forced most, even of the neutral Indians, to 
join their brethren who had gone on the war-path, and as an 
example of the utter confusion that reigned, the very Indians 
that were at war with one British colony, Virginia, were still 
drawing supplies from the British post of Detroit."^ 

Logan's rage had been terrible. He had changed and not 
for the better, as he grew older, becoming a sombre, moody 
man; worse than all, he had succumbed to the fire-water, the 
'■ "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 471. 
' Ibid., pp. 435, 467, 602. • Ibid., pp. 405, 707. * Ibid., p. 808. 

Ibtd.,p.677. 'Ibid.. pp. 463, 467. ' Ibid.,p. 684. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 175 

curse of his race. The horrible treachery and brutality of 
the assault wherein his kinsfolk were slain made him mad for 
revenge; every wolfish instinct in him came to the surface. He 
wreaked a terrible vengeance for his wrongs ; but in true In- 
dian fashion it fell, not on those who had caused them, but 
on others who were entirely innocent. Indeed, he did not know 
he had caused them. The massacres at Captina and Yellow 
Creek occurred so near together that they were confounded 
with each other ; and not only the Indians but many whites as 
well,^ credited Cresap and Greathouse with being jointly re- 
sponsible for both, and as Cresap was the most prominent, he 
was the one especially singled out for hatred. 

Logan instantly fell on the settlement with a small band of 
Mingo warriors. On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, 
among them those of six children.^ A party of Virginians, 
under a man named McClure, followed him ; but he ambushed 
and defeated them, slaying their leader.^ He repeated these 
forays at least three times. Yet, in spite of his fierce craving 
for revenge, he still showed many of the traits that had made 
him beloved of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner, 
he refused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life 
at the risk of his own. A few days afterward he suddenly 
appeared to this prisoner v/ith some gunpowder ink, and dic- 
tated to him a note. On his next expedition this note, tied 
to a war-club, was left in the house of a settler, whose entire 
family was murdered. It was a short document with ferocious 
directness, as a kind of public challenge or taunt to the man 
whom he wrongly deemed to be the author of his misfortunes. 
It ran as follows : 

"Captain Cresap: 

"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The 
white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a great while ago, 
and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again 
on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought 

^ "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 435. 

^ Ibid., pp. 468, 546. ' Ibid., p. 470. 



176 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

I must kill too ; and I have been three times to war since ; but 
the Indians are not angry, only myself. 

"Captain John Logan. 
"July 21, 1774."^ 

There is a certain deliberate and bloodthirsty earnestness 
about this letter which must have shown the whites clearly, 
if they still needed to be shown, what bitter cause they had 
to rue the wrongs that had been done to Logan. 

The Shawnees and Mingos were soon joined by many of 
the Delawares and outlying Iroquois, especially Senecas; as 
well as by the Wyandots and by large bands of ardent young 
warriors from among the Algonquin tribes along the Miami, 
the Wabash, and the Lakes. Their inroads on the settlements 
were characterized, as usual, by extreme stealth and merci- 
less ferocity. They stole out of the woods with the silent 
cunning of wild beasts, and ravaged with a cruelty ten times 
greater. They burned down the lonely log huts, ambushed 
travellers, shot the men as they hunted or tilled the soil, 
ripped open the women with child, and burned many of their 
captives at the stake. Their noiseless approach enabled them 
to fall on the settlers before their presence was suspected ; and 
they disappeared as suddenly as they had come, leaving no 
trail that could be followed. The charred huts and scalped 
and mangled bodies of their victims were left as ghastly re- 
minders of their visit, the sight stirring the backwoodsmen to 
a frenzy of rage all the more terrible in the end, because it 
was impotent for the time being. Generally, they made their 
escape successfully; occasionally, they were beaten off or over- 
taken and killed or scattered. 

When they met armed woodsmen the fight was always des- 
perate. In May, a party of hunters and surveyors, being sud- 
denly attacked in the forest, beat off their assailants and took 

* Jefferson MSS. Deposition of Wm. Robinson, February 28, 1800, and 
letter from Harry Innes, March 2, 1799, with a copy of Logan's letter as 
made in his notebook at the time. 



LORD DUNMORE'S WAR 177 

eight scalps, though with a loss of nine of their own number.^ 
Moreover, the settlers began to band together to make retalia- 
tory inroads ; and while Lord Dunmore was busily preparing 
to strike a really effective blow, he directed the frontiers- 
men of the Northwest to undertake a foray, so as to keep 
the Indians employed. Accordingly, they gathered together, 
four hundred strong,- crossed the Ohio in the end of July, 
and marched against a Shawnee town on the Muskingum. They 
had a brisk skirmish with the Shawnees, drove them back, 
and took five scalps, losing two men killed and five wounded. 
Then the Shawnees tried to ambush them, but their ambush 
was discovered and they promptly fled, after a slight skirmish, 
in which no one was killed but one Indian, whom Cresap, a 
very active and vigorous man, ran down and slew with his 
tomahawk.^ The Shawnee village was burned, seventy acres 
of standing corn were cut down, and the settlers returned in 
triumph. On the march back they passed through the towns 
of the peaceful Moravian Delawares, to whom they did no 
harm. 

^ "American Archives," p. 373. 

^ Under a certain Angus MacDonald — ibid., p. 722. They crossed the 
Ohio at Fish Creek, 120 miles below Pittsburg. 
^ "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, pp. 682, 684. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA; AND LOGAN'S 

SPEECH 

1774 

MEANWHILE Lord Dunmore, having garrisoned the 
frontier forts, three of which were put under the orders 
of Daniel Boone, was making ready a formidable army 
with which to overwhelm the hostile Indians. It was to be 
raised, and to march, in two wings or divisions, each fifteen 
hundred strong, which were to join at the mouth of the Great 
Kanawha. One wing, the right or northernmost, was to be 
commanded by the earl in person; while the other, composed 
exclusively of frontiersmen living among the mountains west 
and southwest of the Blue Ridge, was intrusted to General 
Andrew Lewis. Lewis was a stalwart backwoods soldier, be- 
longing to a family of famous frontier fighters, but, though 
a sternly just and fearless man,^ he does not appear to have 
had more than average qualifications to act as a commander 
of border troops when pitted against Indians. 

The backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies felt that the quarrel 
was their own; in their hearts the desire for revenge burned 
like* a sullen flame. The old men had passed their manhood 
with nerves tense from the strain of unending watchfulness, 
and souls embittered by terrible and repeated disasters; the 
young men had been cradled in stockaded forts, round which 
there prowled a foe whose comings and goings were unknown, 
and who was unseen till the moment when the weight of his 
hand was felt. They had been helpless to avenge their wrongs, 

* Stewart's "Narrative." 
178 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 179 

and now that there was at last a chance to do so, they thronged 
eagerly to Lewis's standard. The left wing or army assembled 
at the Great Levels of Greenbriar, and thither came the heroes 
of long rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-shirt, gathering from 
every stockaded hamlet, every lonely clearing and smoky 
hunter's camp that lay along the ridges from whose hollows 
sprang the sources of the Eastern and Western waters. They 
were not uniformed, save that they all wore the garb of the 
frontier hunter; but most of them were armed with good rifles 
and were skilful woodsmen, and, though utterly undisciplined, 
they were magnificent individual fighters.-^ The officers were 
clad and armed almost precisely like the rank and file, save that 
some of them had long swords girded to their waistbelts; they 
carried rifles, for, where the result of the contest depended 
mainly on the personal prowess of the individual fighter, the 
leader was expected literally to stand in the forefront of the 
battle, and to inspirit his followers by deeds as well as words. 

Among these troops was a company of rangers who came 
from the scattered wooden forts of the Watauga and the 
Nolichucky. Both Sevier and Robertson took part in this 
war, and though the former saw no fighting, the latter, who 
had the rank of sergeant, was more fortunate. 

While the backwoods general was mustering his unruly and 
turbulent host of skilled riflemen, the English earl led his 
own levies, some fifteen hundred strong, to Fort Pitt.^ Here 
he changed his plans, and decided not to try to join the other 
division, as he had agreed to do. This sudden abandonment 
of a scheme already agreed to and acted on by his colleague 
was certainly improper, and, indeed, none of the earl's move- 
ments indicated very much military capacity. However, he 
descended the Ohio River with a flotilla of a hundred canoes, 
besides keel-boats and pirogues,^ to the mouth of the Hock- 
hocking, where he built and garrisoned a small stockade. Then 
he went up the Hockhocking to the falls, whence he marched 

^ "American Archives." Colonel William Preston's letter, September 28, 
1774. */fc/rf., p. 872. , * Doddridge, 235. 



i8o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

to the Scioto, and there intrenched himself in a fortified camp, 
with breastworks of fallen trees, on the edge of the Pickaway 
plains, not far from the Indian town of old Chillicothe. Thence 
he sent out detachments that destroyed certain of the hostile 
towns. He had with him as scouts many men famous in fron- 
tier story, among them George Rogers Clark, Cresap, and 
Simon Kenton (afterward the bane of every neighboring In- 
dian tribe, and renowned all along the border for his deeds of 
desperate prowess, his wonderful adventures, and his hair- 
breadth escapes). Another, of a very different stamp, was 
Simon Girty, of evil fame, whom the whole West grew to 
loathe, with bitter hatred, as "the white renegade." He was 
the son of a vicious Irish trader, who was killed by the Indians ; 
he was adopted by the latter, and grew up among them, and 
his daring ferocity and unscrupulous cunning early made him 
one of their leaders.-^ At the moment he was serving Lord 
Dunmore and the whites; but he was by tastes, habits, and 
education a red man, who felt ill at ease among those of his 
own color. He soon returned to the Indians, and dwelt among 
them ever afterward, the most inveterate foe of the whites 
that was to be found in all the tribes. He lived to be a very 
old man, and is said to have died fighting his ancient foes and 
kinsmen, the Americans, in our second war against the British. 
But Lord Dunmore's army was not destined to strike the 
decisive blow in the contest. The great Shawnee chief, Corn- 
stalk, was as wary and able as he was brave. He had from 
the first opposed the war with the whites ; " but as he had been 
unable to prevent it, he was now bent on bringing it to a suc- 
cessful issue. He was greatly outnumbered; but he had at his 
command over a thousand painted and plumed warriors, the 

* See Magazine of American History, XV, 256. 

' De Haas, p. 161. He is a very fair and trustworthy writer; in partic- 
ular, as regards Logan's speech and Cresap's conduct. It is to be regretted 
that Brantz Mayer, in dealing with these latter subjects, .could not have 
approached them with the same desire to be absolutely impartial, instead 
of appearing to act solely as an advocate. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA i8i 

pick of the young men of the Western tribes, the most daring 
braves to be found between the Ohio and the Great Lakes. 
His foes were divided, and he determined to strike first at the 
one who would least suspect a blow, but whose ruin, neverthe- 
less, would involve that of the other. H Lewis's army could 
be surprised and overwhelmed, the fate of Lord Dunmore's 
would be merely a question of days. So without delay. Corn- 
stalk, crafty in counsel, mighty in battle, and swift to carry 
out what he had planned, led his long files of warriors, with 
noiseless speed, through leagues of trackless woodland to the 
banks of the Ohio. 

The backwoodsmen who were to form the army of Lewis 
had begun to gather at the Levels of Greenbriar before the 
1st of September, and by the 7th most of them were assem- 
bled. Altogether, the force under Lewis consisted of four 
commands, as follows : a body of Augusta troops, under Col- 
onel Charles Lewis, a brother of the general ;^ a body of Bote- 
tourt troops, under Colonel William Fleming;- a small inde- 
pendent company, under Colonel John Field; and, finally, the 
Fincastle men, from the Holston, Clinch, Watauga, and New 
River ^ settlements, under Colonel William Christian."* One 
of Christian's captains was a stout old Marylander, of Welsh 
blood, named Evan Shelby; and Shelby's son Isaac,^ a stal- 
wart, stern-visaged young man, who afterward played a very 
prominent part on the border, was a subaltern in his company, 
in which Robertson likewise served as sergeant. Although with- 
out experience in drill, it may be doubted if a braver or phys- 

^His eight captains were George Matthews, Alexander McClannahan, 
John Dickinson, John Lewis (son of William), Benjamin Harrison, Wil- 
liam Paul, Joseph Haynes, and Samuel Wilson. Hale, "Trans-Alleghany 
Pioneers," p. 181. 

^ His seven captains were Matthew Arbuckle, John Murray, John Lewis 
(son of Andrew), James Robertson, Robert McClannahan, James Ward, 
and John Stewart (author of the "Narrative"). 

'As the Kanawha was sometimes called. 

* Whose five captains were Evan Shelby, Russell, Herbert, Draper, and 
Buford. 

'Born December 11, 1750, near Hagerstown, Md. 



i82 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ically finer set of men were ever got together on this conti- 
nent.^ 

Among such undisciplined troops it was inevitable that there 
should be both delay and insubordination. Nevertheless, they 
behaved a good deal better than their commander had expected ; 
and he was much pleased with their cheerfulness and their 
eagerness for action. The Fincastle men, being from the 
remote settlements, were unable to get together in time to start 
with the others; and Colonel Field grew jealous of his com- 
mander and decided to march his little company alone. The 
Indians were hovering around the camp, and occasionally shot 
at and wounded stragglers, or attempted to drive off the pack- 
horses. 

The army started in three divisions. The bulk, consisting 
of Augusta men, under Colonel Charles Lewis, marched on 
September 8th, closely followed by the Botetourt troops under 
Andrew Lewis himself.- Field, with his small company, 

^ Letter of Colonel William Preston, September 28, 1774. "American 
Archives." 

^ Letter of one of Lord Dunmore's officers, November 21, 1774. "Amer- 
ican Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 1017. Hale gives a minute account 
of the route followed; Stewart says they started on the nth. 

With the journal of Floyd's expedition, mentioned on a previous page, 
I received iNIS. copies of two letters to Colonel William Preston, both 
dated at Camp Union, at the Great Levels ; one of September 8th from 
Colonel Andrew Lewis, and one of September 7th (9th?) from Colonel 
William Christian. 

Colonel Lewis's letter runs in part: "From Augusta we have 600; of 
this county [Botetourt] about 400; Major Field is joined with 40. . . . 
I have had less Trouble with the Troops than I expected. ... I received 
a letter from his Lordship last Sunday morning which was dated the 
30th of August at Old Towns, which I take to be Chresops ; he then I 
am told had Colonel Stephens and Major Conolly at his Elbow as might 
easily be discovered by the Contents of his letter which expressed his 
Lordship's warmest wishes that I would with all the troops from this 
Quarter join him at the mouth of the little Kanaway; I wrote his Lord- 
ship that it was not in my power to alter our rout. . . . The Indians 
wounded a man within two miles of us . . . and wounded another ; from 
this we may expect they will be picking about us all the March." He 
states that he has more men than he expected, and will therefore need 
more provisions, and that he will leave some of his poorest troops to 
garrison the small fort. 

Colonel Christian's letter states that the Augusta men took with them 
400 pack-horses, carrying 54,000 pounds of tlour, and 108 beeves ; they 
started "yesterday"; Field marched "this evening"; Fleming and his 450 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 183 

started off on his own account; but after being out a couple 
of days, two of his scouts met two Indians, with the result 
that a man was killed on each side; after which, profiting by 
the loss, he swallowed his pride and made haste to join the 
first division. The Fincastle troops were delayed so long that 
most of them, with their commander, were still fifteen miles 
from the main body the day the battle was fought; but Cap- 
tains Shelby and Russell, with parts of their companies, went 
on ahead of the others, and, as will be seen, joined Lewis in 
time to do their full share of the fighting. Colonel Christian 
himself only reached the Levels on the afternoon of the day 
the Augusta men had marched. He was burning with desire 
to distinguish himself, and his men were also very eager to 
have a share in the battle; and he besought Lewis to let him 
go along with what troops he had. But he was refused per- 
mission, whereat he was greatly put out. 

Lewis found he had more men than he expected, and so 
left some of the worst troops to garrison the small forts. Just 
before starting, he received a letter from the earl advising, 
but not commanding, a change in their plans; to this he re- 
fused to accede, and was rather displeased at the proposal, at- 
tributing it to the influence of Conolly, whom the backwoods 
leaders were growing to distrust. There is not the slightest 
reason to suppose, however, that he then, or at any time dur- 

Botetourt men, with 200 pack-horses, "are going next Monday." Field 
had brought word that Dunmore expected to be at the mouth of the 
Great Kanawha "some days after the 20th." Some Indians had tried to 
steal a number of pack-horses, but had been discovered and frightened off. 
Christian was very much discontented at being bidden to stay behind 
until he could gather 300 men, and bring up the rear ; he expresses his 
fear that his men will be much exasperated when they learn that they 
are to stay behind, and reiterates : "I would not for all I am worth be 
behind crossing the Ohio and that we should miss lending our assistance." 
Field brought an account of MacDonald's fight (see ante, p. 201, vol. I) ; 
he said the whites were 400 and the Indians but 30 strong, that the 
former had four men killed and six wounded ; the Indians but three or 
four killed and one captured, and their town was burnt. The number of 
the Shawnees and their allies was estimated at 1,200 warriors that could 
be put into one battle. The 400 horses that had started with the Augusta 
men were to return as fast as they could (after reaching the embarkment 
point, whence the flour was carried in canoes). 



i84 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ing the campaign, suspected the earl of treachery ; nor did the 
latter 's conduct give any good ground for such a beHef. Never- 
theless, this view gained credit among the Virginians in later 
years, when they were greatly angered by the folly and ferocity 
of Lord Dunmore's conduct during the early part of the Rev- 
olutionary War, and looked at all his past acts with jaundiced 
eyes.^ 

Lewis's troops formed a typical backwoods army, both 
officers and soldiers. They wore fringed hunting-shirts, dyed 
yellow, brown, white, and even red ; quaintly carved shot-bags 
and powder-horns hung from their broad ornamented belts; 
they had fur caps or soft hats, moccasins, and coarse woollen 
leggings reaching half-way up the thigh.- Each carried his 
flint-lock, his tomahawk, and scalping-knife. They marched in 
long files with scouts or spies thrown out in front and on the 
flanks, while axemen went in advance to clear a trail over 
which they could drive the beef-cattle and the pack-horses, 
laden with provisions, blankets, and ammunition. They struck 
out straight through the trackless wilderness, making their 
road as they went, until on the 21st of the month ^ they reached 
the Kanawha, at the mouth of Elk Creek. Here they halted to 
build dugout canoes; and about this time were overtaken by 
the companies of Russell and Shelby. On October ist* they 
started to descend the river in twenty-seven canoes, a portion 
of the army marching down along the Indian trail, which 

^ When the Revolutionary War broke out, the earl not only fought the 
revolted colonists with all legitimate weapons, but tried to incite the blacks 
to servile insurrection, and sent agents to bring his old foes, the red men 
of the forest, down on his old friends, the settlers. He encouraged pirat- 
ical and plundering raids, and on the other hand failed to show the cour- 
age and daring that are sometimes partial offsets to ferocity. But in this 
war, in 1774, he conducted himself with great energy in making prepara- 
tions, and showed considerable skill as a negotiator in concluding the 
peace, and apparently went into the conflict with hearty zest and good- 
will. He was evidently much influenced by Conolly, a very weak adviser, 
however; and his whole course betrayed much vacillation and no general- 
ship. 

* Smyth's "Tour," II, p. 179. ^ "American Archives," p. 1017. 

* Ibid. Stewart says they reached the mouth of the Kanawha on Octo- 
ber 1st; another account says September 30th; but this is an error, as 
shown both by the "American Archives" and by the Campbell MSS. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 185 

followed the base of the hills, instead of the river-bank, as 
it was thus easier to cross the heads of the creeks and ravines.^ 

They reached the mouth of the river on the 6th,- and camped 
on Point Pleasant, the cape of land jutting out between the 
Ohio and Kanawha. As a consequence the bloody fight that 
ensued is sometimes called the battle of Point Pleasant, and 
sometimes the battle of the Great Kanawha. Hitherto the 
Indians had not seriously molested Lewis's men, though they 
killed a settler right on their line of march, and managed to 
drive off some of the bullocks and pack-horses.^ 

The troops, though tired from their journey, were in good 
spirits and eager to fight. But they were impatient of con- 
trol, and were murmuring angrily that there was favoritism 
shown in the issue of beef. Hearing this, Lewis ordered all 
the poorest beeves to be killed first; but this merely produced 
an explosion of discontent, and large numbers of men, in mu- 
tinous defiance of the orders of their officers, began to range 
the woods, in couples, to kill game. There was little order in 
the camp,* and small attention was paid to picket and sentinel 
duty; the army, like a body of Indian warriors, relying for 
safety mainly upon the sharp-sighted watchfulness of the in- 
dividual members and the activity of the hunting-parties. 

On the 9th, Simon Girty ^ arrived in camp, bringing a mes- 

'Hale, 182. 

^Campbell MSS. Letter of Isaac Shelby to John Shelby, October i6, 
1774. A portion of this letter, unsigned, was printed in "American 
Archives," p. 1016, and in various newspapers (even at Belfast; see Hale, 
p. 187, who thinks it was written by Captain Arbuckle). As it is worth 
preserving and has never been printed in full, I give it in Note I, page 199. 

^ Stewart's "Narrative." 

^ Smyth, II, p. 158. He claims to have played a prominent part in the 
battle. This is certainly not so, and he may not have been present at all ; 
at least Colonel Stewart, who was there and was acquainted with every 
one of note in the army, asserts positively that there was no such man 
along ; nor has any other American account ever mentioned him. His 
military knowledge was nil, as may be gathered from his remark, made 
when the defeats of Braddock and Grant were still recent, that British 
regulars with the bayonet were best fitted to oppose Indians. 

^ Some accounts say that he was accompanied by Kenton and McCulloch ; 
others state that no messenger arrived until after the battle. But this is 
certainly wrong. Shelby's letter shows that the troops learned the gov- 
ernor's change of plans before the battle. 



i86 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

sage from Lord Dunmore, which bade Lewis meet him at the 
Indian towns near the Pickaway plains. Lewis was by no 
means pleased at the change, but nevertheless prepared to 
break camp and march next morning. He had with him at 
this time about eleven hundred men.^ 

His plans, however, were destined to be rudely forestalled, 
for Cornstalk, coming rapidly through the forest, had reached 
the Ohio. That very night the Indian chief ferried his men 
across the river on rafts, six or eight miles above the forks,^ 
and by dawn was on the point of hurling his whole force, of 
nearly a thousand warriors,^ on the camp of his slumbering 
foes. 

Before daylight on the loth, small parties of hunters had, 
as usual, left Lewis's camp. Two of these men, from Rus- 
sell's company, after having gone somewhat over a mile, came 
upon a large party of Indians ; one was killed, and the survivor 
ran back at full speed to give the alarm, telling those in camp 
that he had seen five acres of ground covered with Indians as 
thick as they could stand. ^ 

Almost immediately afterward two men of Shelby's com- 
pany, one being no less a person than Robertson himself and 
the other, Valentine, a brother of John Sevier, also stumbled 
upon the advancing Indians ; being very wary and active men, 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 1017; and was joined by 
Colonel Christian's three hundred the day after the battle. 

^Campbell MSS. Letter of Colonel William Preston (presumably to 
Patrick Henry), October 31, 1774. As it is interesting and has never been 
published, we give it in Note, II, p. 230. 

* Many of the white accounts make their number much greater, without 
any authority ; Shelby estimates it at between eight hundred and one thou- 
sand. Smith, who generally gives the Indian side, says that on this occa- 
sion they were nearly as numerous as the whites. Smyth, who bitterly 
hates the Americans, and always belittles their deeds, puts the number of 
Indians at nine hundred; he would certainly make it as small as possible. 
So the above estimate is probably pretty near the truth, though it is, of 
course, impossible to be accurate. At any rate, it was the only important 
engagement fought by the English or Americans against the northwestern 
Indians in which there was a near approach to equality of force. 

* Campbell MSS. Shelby's letter. Their names were Mooney and Hick- 
man; the latter was killed. Most historians have confused these two men 
with the two others who discovered the Indians at almost the same time. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 187 

they both escaped and reached camp almost as soon as the 
other. 

Instantly the drums beat to arms/ and the backwoodsmen 
— lying out in the open, rolled in their blankets — started from 
the ground, looked to their flints and priming, and were ready 
on the moment. The general, thinking he had only a scout- 
ing-party to deal with, ordered out Colonel Charles Lewis and 
Colonel Fleming, each with one hundred and fifty men. Flem- 
ing had the left and marched up the bank of the Ohio; while 
Lewis, on the right, kept some little distance inland. They 
went about half a mile.^ Then, just before sunrise, while it 
was still dusk, the men in camp, eagerly listening, heard the 
report of three guns, immediately succeeded by a clash like a 
peal of thin thunder, as hundred of rifles rang out together. 
It was evident that the attack was serious and Colonel Field 
was at once despatched to the front with two hundred men.^ 

He came only just in time. At the first fire both of the 
scouts in front of the white line had been killed. The attack 
fell first, and with especial fury, on the division of Charles 
Lewis, who himself was mortally wounded at the very outset; 
he had not taken a tree,'* but was in an open piece of ground, 
cheering on his men when he was shot. He stayed with them 
until the line was formed, and then walked back to camp un- 
assisted, giving his gun to a man who was near him. His 
men, who were drawn up on the high ground skirting Crooked 
Run,^ began to waver, but were rallied by Fleming, whose di- 
vision had been attacked almost simultaneously, until he, too, 
was struck down by a bullet. The line then gave way, except 
that some of Fleming's men still held their own on the left 
in a patch of rugged ground near the Ohio. At this moment, 

^ "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 1017. 

'Ibid., p. 1017. Letter from Stanton, Va., November 4, 1774, says three- 
quarters of a mile ; Shelby says one-quarter of a mile. 

"Ibid., Letter of November 17th. 

*The frontier expression for covering oneself behind a tree trunk. 

"A small stream running into the Kanawha near its mouth. De Haas, 
p. 151. 



i88 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

however, Colonel Field came up and restored the battle, while 
the backwoodsmen who had been left in camp also began to 
hurry up to take part in the fight. General Lewis at last, fully 
awake to the danger, began to fortify the camp by felling tim- 
ber so as to form a breastwork running across the point from 
the Ohio to the Kanawha. This work should have been done 
before; and through attending to it Lewis was unable to take 
any personal part in the battle. 

Meanwhile, the frontiersmen began to push back their foes, 
led by Colonel Field. The latter himself, however, was soon 
slain; he was at the time behind a great tree, and was shot by 
two Indians on his right, while he was trying to get a shot 
at another on his left who was distracting his attention by 
mocking and jeering at him.^ The command then fell on 
Captain Evan Shelby, who turned his company over to the 
charge of his son Isaac. The troops fought on steadily, un- 
daunted by the fall of their leaders, while the Indians attacked 
with the utmost skill, caution, and bravery. The fight was a 
succession of single combats, each man sheltering himself be- 
hind a stump, or rock, or tree trunk, the superiority of the 
backwoodsmen in the use of the rifle being offset by the 
superiority of their foes in the art of hiding and of shielding 
themselves from harm. The hostile lines, though about a 
mile and a quarter in length, were so close together, being 
never more than twenty yards apart, that many of the com- 
batants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and tomahawked 
or stabbed each other ^ to death. The clatter of the rifles was 
incessant, while above the din could be heard the cries and 
groans of the wounded and the shouts of the combatants, as 
each encouraged his own side or jeered savagely at his adver- 
saries. The cheers of the whites mingled with the appalling 
war-whoops and yells of their foes. The Indians also called 
out to the Americans in broken English, taunting them, and 

'Campbell MSS. Preston's letter. 

'"American Archive.*^." Letter of November 4, 1774. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 189 

asking them why their fifes were no longer whistling — for the 
fight was far too close to permit of any such music. Their 
head men walked up and down behind their warriors, exhorting 
them to go in close, to shoot straight, and to bear themselves 
well in the fight ; ^ while throughout the action the whites op- 
posite Cornstalk could hear his deep, sonorous voice as he 
cheered on his braves and bade them "be strong, be strong." " 
About noon the Indians tried to get round the flank of the 
whites into their camp; but this movement was repulsed, and 
a party of the Americans ^ followed up their advantage, and 
running along the banks of the Kanawha, outflanked the enemy 
in turn. The Indians, being pushed very hard, now began to 
fall back, the best fighters covering the retreat while the 
wounded were being carried off; although — a rare thing in 
Indian battles — they were pressed so close that they were able 
to bear away but a portion of their dead. The whites were 
forced to pursue with the greatest caution; for those of them 
who advanced heedlessly were certain to be ambushed and re- 
ceive a smart check. Finally, about one o'clock, the Indians, 
in their retreat, reached a very strong position, where the under- 
brush was very close and there were many fallen logs and 
steep banks. Here they stood resolutely at bay, and the whites 
did not dare attack them in such a stronghold. So the action 
came almost to an end ; though skirmishing went on until about 
an hour before sunset, the Indians still at times taunting their 
foes and calling out to them that they had eleven hundred men 
as well as the whites, and that to-morrow they were going to 
be two thousand strong.^ This was only bravado, however; 
they had suffered too heavily to renew the attack, and under 
cover of darkness they slipped away and made a most skilful 
retreat, carrying all their wounded in safety across the Ohio. 
The exhausted Americans, having taken a number of scalps, 

^ Campbell MSS. Preston's letter. ' Stewart's "Narrative." 

' Led by Isaac Shelby, James Stewart, and George Matthews. 
* Campbell MSS. Preston's letter. 



190 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

as well as forty guns and many tomahawks ^ and some other 
plunder,- returned to their camp. 

The battle had been bloody as well as stubborn. The whites, 
though the victors, had suffered more than their foes, and, in- 
deed, had won only because it was against the entire policy of 
Indian warfare to suffer a severe loss, even if a victory could 
be gained thereby. Of the whites, some seventy-five men had 
been killed or mortally wounded, and one hundred and forty 
severely or slightly wounded,^ so that they lost a fifth of their 
whole number. The Indians had not lost much more than half 
as many; about forty warriors were killed outright or died 
of their wounds.* Among the Indians no chief of importance 
was slain ; whereas the Americans had seventeen officers killed 
or wounded, and lost in succession their second, third, and 
fourth in command. The victors buried their own dead and 
left the bodies of the vanquished to the wolves and ravens. 
At midnight, after the battle, Colonel Christian and his Fin- 
castle men reached the ground. 

The battle of the Great Kanawha was a purely American 
victory, for it was fought solely by the backwoodsmen them- 
selves. Their immense superiority over regular troops in such 

^ "American Archives." Letter of November 4, 1774. It is doubtful if 
Logan was in this fight; the story about Cornstalk killing one of his men 
who flinched may or may not be true. 

^ Hale, 109; the plunder was afterward sold at auction for £74 4^. 6d. 

' These are the numbers given by Stewart ; but the accounts vary greatly. 
Monette ("Valley of the Mississippi") says 87 killed and 141 wounded. 
The letters written at the time evidently take no account of any but the 
badly wounded. Shelby thus makes the killed 55 and the wounded (in- 
cluding the mortally hurt) 68. Another account ("American Archives," 
p. 1017) says 40 men killed and 96 wounded, 20 odd of whom were since 
dead ; whilst a foot-note to this letter enumerates 53 dead outright and 87 
wounded, "some of whom have since died." It is evidently impossible 
that the slightly wounded are included in these lists ; and in all prob- 
ability Stewart's account is correct, as he was an eye-witness and par- 
ticipant. 

* Twenty-one were scalped on the field; the bodies of 12 more were af- 
terward found boliind logs or in holes where they had been lain, and 8 
eventually died of their wounds (see "American Archives," Smith, Hale, 
De Haas, etc.). Smith, who wrote from the Indian side, makes their loss 
only ..'8 ; but this apparently does not include the loss of the Western 
Indians, the allies of the Shawnees, Mingos, and Delawares. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 191 

contests can be readily seen when their triumph on this oc- 
casion is compared with the defeats previously suffered by 
Braddock's grenadiers and Grant's highlanders at the hands 
of the same foes. It was purely a soldiers' battle, won by hard 
individual fighting; there was no display of generalship, except 
on Cornstalk's part.^ It was the most closely contested of any 
battle ever fought with the northwestern Indians, and it was 
the only victory gained over a large body of them by a force 
but slightly superior in numbers.- Both because of the char- 
acter of the fight itself, and because of the results that flowed 
from it, it is worthy of being held in especial remembrance. 
Lewis left his sick and wounded in the camp at the Point, 
protected by a rude breastwork and with an adequate guard. 
With the remainder of his forces, over a thousand strong, he 
crossed the Ohio and pushed on to the Pickaway plains. When 
but a few miles from the earl's encampment he was met by a 
messenger informing him that a treaty of peace was being 
negotiated with the Indians.^ The backwoodsmen, flushed with 
success and angry at their losses, were eager for more blood- 
shed; and it was only with difficulty that they were restrained 
and were finally induced to march homeward, the earl riding 

^ Smyth, the Englishman, accuses Lewis of cowardice, an accusation 
which deserves no more attention than do the similar accusations of treach- 
ery brought against Dunmore. Brantz Mayer speaks in very hyperbolic 
terms of the "relentless Lewis," and the "great slaughter" of the Indians. 

^ Wayne won an equally decisive victory, but he outnumbered his foes 
three to one. Bouquet, who was almost beaten and was saved by the pro- 
vincial rangers, was greatly the superior in force, and suffered four times 
the loss he inflicted. In both cases, especially that of Bouquet, the account 
of the victor must be received with caution where it deals with the force 
and loss of the vanquished. In the same way Shelby and the other re- 
porters of the Kanawha fight stated that the Indians lost more heavily 
than the whites. 

' The stories of how Lewis suspected the earl of treachery, and of how 
the backwoodsmen were so exasperated that they wished to kill the latter, 
may have some foundation ; but are quite as likely to be pure inventions, 
made up after the Revolutionary War. In De Haas, the "American 
Pioneer," etc., can be found all kinds of stories, some even told by mem- 
bers of the Clark and Lewis families, which are meant to criminate Dun- 
more, but which make such mistakes in chronology — placing the battle of 
Lexington in the year of the Kanawha fight, asserting that peace was not 
made till the following spring, etc. — that they must be dismissed offhand 
as entirely untrustworthy. 



192 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

down to them and giving his orders in person. They grumbled 
angrily against the earl for sending them back, and in later 
days accused him of treachery for having done so; but his 
course v^as undoubtedly proper, for it would have been very 
difficult to conclude peace in the presence of such fierce and 
unruly auxiliaries. 

The spirit of the Indians had been broken by their defeat. 
Their stern old chief, Cornstalk, alone remained withunshaken 
heart, resolute to bid defiance to his foes and to fight the war 
out to the bitter end. But when the council of the head men 
and war-chiefs was called, it became evident that his tribesmen 
would not fight, and even his burning eloquence could not 
goad the warriors into again trying the hazard of battle. They 
listened unmoved and in sullen silence to the thrilling and im- 
passioned words with which he urged them to once more march 
against the Long Knives, and if necessary to kill their women 
and children, and then themselves die fighting to the last man. 
At last, when he saw he could not stir the hearts of his hearers, 
he struck his tomahawk into the war-post and announced that 
he himself would go and make peace. At that the warriors 
broke silence, and all grunted out approvingly "Ough ! ough \ 
ough!" and then they instantly sent runners to the earl's army 
to demand a truce. -^ 

Accordingly, with all his fellow chiefs, he went to Lord 
Dunmore's camp, and there entered into a treaty. The crest- 
fallen Indians assented to all the terms the conquerors pro- 
posed. They agreed to give up all the white prisoners and 
stolen horses in their possession, and to surrender all claim to 
the lands south of the Ohio, and they gave hostages as an 
earnest of their good faith.- But their chief spokesman. Corn- 
stalk, while obliged to assent to these conditions, yet preserved 
through all the proceedings a bearing of proud defiance that 
showed how little the fear of personal consequences influenced 

* Stewart's "Narrative." 

'"American Archives," 4th Series. St. Clair's letter, December 4, 1774. 
Also Jefferson MSS. Deposition of William Robinson, etc. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 193 

his own actions. At the talks he addressed the white leader 
with vehement denunciation and reproach, in a tone that seemed 
rather that of a conqueror than of one of the conquered. In- 
deed, he himself was not conquered; he felt that his tribes- 
men were craven, but he knew that his own soul feared noth- 
ing. The Virginians, who, like their Indian antagonists, prized 
skill in oratory only less than skill in warfare, were greatly im- 
pressed by the chieftain's eloquence, by his command of words, 
his clear, distinct voice, his peculiar emphasis, and his singu- 
larly grand and majestic, and yet graceful, bearing; they after- 
ward said that his oratory fully equalled that of Patrick Henry 
himself.^ 

Every prominent chief but one came to the council. The 
exception was Logan, who remained apart in the Mingo village 
brooding over his wrongs and the vengeance he had taken. 
His fellows, when questioned about his absence, answered 
that he was like a mad dog whose bristles were still up, but 
that they were gradually falling; and when he was entreated 
to be present at the meeting he responded that he was a war- 
rior, not a councillor, and would not come. The Mingos, be- 
cause they failed to appear at the treaty, had their camp de- 
stroyed and were forced to give hostages, as the Delawares and 
Shawnees had done,- and Logan himself finally sullenly ac- 
quiesced in, or at least ceased openly to oppose, the peace. 

But he would not come in person to Lord Dunmore ; so the 
earl was obliged to communicate with him through a messenger, 
a frontier veteran ^ named John Gibson, who had long lived 
among the Indians and knew thoroughly both their speech and 
their manners.^ To this messenger Logan was willing to talk. 
Taking him aside, he suddenly addressed him in a speech that 
will always retain its place as perhaps the finest outburst of 

* See De Haas, 162. 

^ "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, pp. 1013, 1226. 

'John Gibson, afterward a general in the army of the United States. 
See Note, III, p. 203. 

''Jeflferson IvISS. Statements of John Gibson, etc.; there is some uncer- 
tainty as to whether Logan came up to Gibson at the treaty and drew 
him aside, or whether the latter went to seek the former in his wigwam. 



194 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

savage eloquence of which we have any authentic record. The 
messenger took it down in writing, translating it literally/ 
and, returning to camp, gave it to Lord Dunmore. The earl 
then read it, in open council, to the whole backwoods army, 
including Cresap, Clark, and the other scouts. The speech, 
when read, proved to be no message of peace, nor an acknowl- 
edgment of defeat ; but, instead, a strangely pathetic recital 
of his wrongs, and a fierce and exulting justification of the 
vengeance he had taken. It ran as follows : 

*T appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's 
cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came 
cold and naked and he clothed him not? During the course 
of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his 
camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the 
whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, 'Logan 
is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have 
lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel 
Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered 
all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and 
children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of 
any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have 
sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my ven- 
geance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but 
do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan 
never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. 
Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." 

The tall frontiersmen, lounging in a circle roundabout, 
listened to the reading of the speech with eager interest ; rough 
Indian haters though they were, they were so much impressed 
by it that in the evening it was a common topic of conversa- 
tion over their camp-fires, and they continually attempted to 

^Jefferson Papers (State Department MSS.), 5-1-4. Statement of Colo- 
nel John Gibson to John Anderson, an Indian trader at Pittsburg, in 1774. 
Anderson had asked him if he had not himself added somewhat to the 
speech ; he responded that he had not, that it was a literal translation or 
transcription of Logan's words. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 195 

rehearse it to one another.^ But they knew that Greathouse, 
not Cresap, had been the chief offender in the murder of Lo- 
gan's family; and when the speech was read, Clark, turning 
round, jeered at and rallied Cresap as being so great a man 
that the Indians put everything on his shoulders ; whereat, Cre- 
sap, much angered, swore that he had a good mind to toma- 
hawk Greathouse for the murder.^' 

The speech could not have been very satisfactory to the 
earl; but at least it made it evident that Logan did not intend 
to remain on the war-path; and so Lord Dunmore marched 
home with his hostages. On the homeward march, near the 
mouth of the river Hockhocking, the officers of the army held 
a notable meeting. They had followed the British earl to 
battle; but they were Americans, in warm sympathy with the 
Continental Congress which was then in session. Fearful lest 
their countrymen might not know that they were at one with 
them in the struggle of which the shadow was looming up with 
ever-increasing blackness, they passed resolutions which were 
afterward published. Their speakers told how they had lived 
in the woods for three months without hearing from the Con- 
gress at Philadelphia, nor yet from Boston, where the dis- 
turbances seemed most likely to come to a head. They spoke 
of their fear lest their countrymen might be misled into the 
belief that this numerous body of armed men was hostile or 
indifferent to the cause of America; and proudly alluded to 
the fact that they had lived so long without bread or salt, or 
shelter at night, and that the troops they led could march and 
fight as well as any in the world. In their resolutions they 
professed their devotion to their king, to the honor of his 
crown, and to the dignity of the British Empire; but they 
added that this devotion would only last while the king deigned 
to rule over a free people, for their love for the liberty of 
America outweighed all other considerations, and they would 

* Jefferson MSS. Affidavits of Andrew Rogers, William Russell, and 
others who were present. 
' Clark's letter. 



196 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

exert every power for its defense, not riotously, but when reg- 
ularly called forth by the voice of their countrymen. 

They ended by tendering their thanks to Lord Dunmore 
for his conduct. He was also warmly thanked by the Virginia 
legislature, as well as by the frontiersmen of Fincastle,^ and 
he fully deserved their gratitude. 

The war had been ended in less than six months' time ; and 
its results were of the utmost importance. It had been very 
successful. In Braddock's war, the borderers are estimated 
to have suffered a loss of fifty souls for every Indian slain; 
in Pontiac's war, they had learned to defend themselves better, 
and yet the ratio was probably as ten to one," whereas in this 
war, if we consider only males of fighting age, it is probable 
that a good deal more than half as many Indians as whites 
were killed, and even including women and children, the ratio 
would not rise to more than three to one. Certainly, in all 
the contests waged against the northwestern Indians during 
the last half of the eighteenth century there was no other where 
the whites inflicted so great a relative loss on their foes. Its 
results were most important. It kept the northwestern tribes 
quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; 
and, above all, it rendered possible the settlement of Ken- 
tucky, and therefore the winning of the West. Had it not 
been for Lord Dunmore's war, it is more than likely that 
when the colonies achieved their freedom they would have 
found their western boundary fixed at the Alleghany Moun- 
tains.^ 

Nor must we permit our sympathy for the foul wrongs of 
the two great Indian heroes of the contest to blind us to the 
fact that the struggle was precipitated, in the first place, by 
the outrages of the red men, not the whites; and that the 
war was not only inevitable, but was also in its essence just 

* See De Haas, 167. 

' These are Smith's estimates, derived largely from Indian sources. They 
are probably excessive, but not very greatly so. 

' It is difficult to understand why some minor historians consider this 
war as fruitless. 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 197 

and righteous on the part of the borderers. Even the unpar- 
donable and hideous atrocity of the murder of Logan's family 
was surpassed in horror by many of the massacres committed 
by the Indians about the same time. The annals of the border 
are dark and terrible. 

Among the characters who played the leaders' parts in this 
short and tragic drama of the backwoods few came to much 
afterward. Cresap died a brave Revolutionary soldier. Of 
Greathouse we know nothing; we can only hope that event- 
ually the Indians scalped him. Conolly became a virulent 
Tory, who yet lacked the power to do the evil that he wished. 
Lewis served creditably in the Revolution ; while at its out- 
break Lord Dunmore was driven from Virginia and disap- 
pears from our ken. Proud, gloomy Logan never recovered 
from the blow that had been dealt him ; he drank deeper and 
deeper, and became more and more an implacable, moody, and 
bloodthirsty savage, yet with noble qualities that came to the 
surface now and then. Again and again he wrought havoc 
among the frontier settlers ; yet we several times hear of his 
saving the lives of prisoners. Once he saved Simon Kenton 
from torture and death, when Girty, moved by a rare spark 
of compassion for his former comrade, had already tried to 
do so and failed. At last, he perished in a drunken brawl by 
the hand of another Indian. 

Cornstalk died a grand death, but by an act of cowardly 
treachery on the part of his American foes; it is one of the 
darkest stains on the checkered pages of frontier history. Early 
in 1777 he came into the garrison at Point Pleasant to explain 
that, while he was anxious to keep at peace, his tribe were bent 
on going to war; and he frankly added that, of course, if they 
did so he should have to join them. He and three other In- 
dians, among them his son and the chief Redhawk, who had 
also been at the Kanawha battle, were detained as hostages. 
While they were thus confined in the fort a member of a com- 
pany of rangers was killed by the Indians near by; whereupon 



198 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

his comrades, headed by their captain,^ rushed in furious anger 
into the fort to slay the hostages. Cornstalk heard them rush- 
ing in and knew that his hour had come ; with unmoved coun- 
tenance he exhorted his son not to fear, for it was the will 
of the Great Spirit that they should die there together; then, 
as the murderers burst into the room, he quietly rose up to 
meet them, and fell dead, pierced by seven or eight bullets. 
His son and his comrades were likewise butchered, and we have 
no record of any more infamous deed. 

Though among the whites the men who took prominent 
parts in the struggle never afterward made any mark, yet it 
is worth noting that all the after-time leaders of the West 
were engaged in some way in Lord Dunmore's war. Their 
fates were various. Boone led the vanguard of the white 
advance across the mountains, wandered his life long through 
the wilderness, and ended his days in extreme old age beyond 
the Mississippi, a backwoods hunter to the last. Shelby won 
laurels at King's Mountain, became the first governor of Ken- 
tucky, and when an old man revived the memories of his youth 
by again leading the Western men in battle against the Brit- 
ish and Indians. Sevier and Robertson were for a genera- 
tion the honored chiefs of the southwestern people. Clark, the 
ablest of all, led a short but brilliant career, during which he 
made the whole nation his debtor. Then, like Logan, he sank 
under the curse of drunkenness — often hardly less dangerous to 
the borderer than to his red enemy — and passed the remainder 
of his days in ignoble and slothful retirement. 

^ John Hall ; it is worth while preserving the name of the ringleader in 
so brutal and cowardly a butchery. See Stewart's "Narrative." 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 199 
NOTE 



(Campbell MSS.; this letter and the one following are from copies, and 
the spelling, etc., may not be quite as in the originals.) 

Camp Opposite the Mouth of the 
Great Kenaway, 

October 16 — 1774. 
Dear Uncle, 

I gladly embrace this opportunity to acquaint you that we are all 
here yet alive through God's mercies, & I sincerely wish that this may 
find you and your family in the station of health that we left you. 
I never had anything worth notice to acquaint you with since I left 
you till now — the express seems to be hurrying, that I cannot write 
you with the same coolness and deliberation as I would. We arrived 
at the mouth of the Canaway, thursday 6th. Octo. and encamped on a 
fine piece of ground, with an intent to wait for the Governor and his 
party but hearing that he was going another way we contented our- 
selves to stay there a few days to rest the troops, &c. where we looked 
upon ourselves to be in safety till Monday morning the loth. instant 
when two of our company went out before day to hunt — to wit Val. 
Sevier and James Robinson and discovered a party of Indians. As I 
expect you will hear something of our battle before you get this, I 
have here stated the affair nearly to you : 

For the satisfaction of the people in your parts in this they have a 
true state of the memorable battle fought at the mouth of the Great 
Canaway on the loth. instant. Monday morning about half an hour 
before sunrise, two of Capt. Russells company discovered a large party 
of Indians about a mile from camp, one of which men was killed, the 
other made his escape & brought in his intelligence. In two or three 
minutes after, two of Capt. Shelby's Company came in & confirmed 
the account. Col. Andrew Lewis being informed thereof immediately 
ordered Col. Charles Lewis to take the command of 150 men from 
Augusta and with him went Capt. Dickison, Capt. Harrison, Capt. 
Wilson, Capt. John Lewis, from Augusta and Capt. Sockridge which 
made the first division. Col. Fleming was also ordered to take the 
command of one hundred and fifty more, consisting of Battertout, 
Fincastle & Bedford troops, — viz., Capt. Buford of Bedford, Capt. 
Lewis of Battertout, Capt. Shelby & Capt. Russell of Fincastle which 
made the second division. Col. Lewis marched with his division to 
the right some distance from the Ohio. Col. Fleming with his divi- 
sion up the bank of the Ohio to the left. Col. Lewis' division had not 
marched little more than a quarter of a mile from camp when about 
sunrise, an attack was made on the front of his division in a most 
vigorous manner by the united tribes Indians, — Shawnees, Delawares, 



200 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Mingoes, Taways, and of several other nations, in number not less 
than eight hundred, and by many thought to be a thousand. In this 
heavy attack Col. Charles Lewis received a wound which soon after 
caused his death, and several of his men fell on the spot, — in fact the 
Augusta division was forced to give way to the heavy fire of the 
enemy. In about the second of a minute after the attack on Col. 
Lewis' division, the enemy engaged of Col. Fleming's division on the 
ohio and in a short time Col. Fleming received two balls thro' his left 
arm and one thro' his breast; and after animating the Captains & 
soldiers in a calm manner to the pursuit of victory returned to the 
camp. The loss of the brave Col's was severely felt by the officers in 
particular. But the Augusta troops being shortly reinforced from 
camp by Col. Field with his company, together with Capt. M'Dowers, 
Capt. Matthew's and Capt. Stewart's from Augusta ; Capt. John Lewis, 
Capt. Paulins, Capt. Arbuckle's, and Capt. M'Clannahan's from Bat- 
tertout. The enemy no longer able to maintain their ground was forced 
to give way till they were in a line with the troops left in action on 
branches of ohio by Col. Fleming. In this precipitate retreat Col. Field 
was killed; after which Capt. Shelby was ordered to take the com- 
mand. During this time which was till after twelve of the clock, the 
action continued extremely hot, the close underwood, many steep banks 
and logs greatly favored their retreat, and the bravest of their men 
made the best use of themselves, while others were throwing their 
dead into the ohio, and carrying off the wounded. After twelve the 
action in a small degree, abated, but continued sharp enough till after 
one o'clock. Their long retreat gave them a most advantageous spot 
of ground; from which it appeared to the officers so difficult to dis- 
lodge them, that it was thought most advisable, to stand as the line 
was then formed, which was about a mile and a quarter in length, 
and had till then sustained a constant and equal weight of fire from 
wing to wing. It was till half an hour of sunset they continued firing 
on us, which we returned to their disadvantage, at length night coming 
on they found a safe retreat. They had not the satisfaction of scalping 
any of our men save one or two stragglers, whom they killed before 
the engagement. Many of their dead they scalped rather than we 
should have them, but our troops scalped upwards of twenty of those 
who were first killed. Its beyond a doubt, their loss in numbers far 
exceeds our wliich is considerable. 

Field officers killed — Col. Charles Lewis, & Col. John Fields. Field 
officers wounded — Col. William Fleming ; — Capts. killed, John Murray, 
Capt. Samuel Wilson, Capt. Robert M'Clannahan, Capt. James Ward, 
Capts. wounded — Thomas Buford, John Dickison & John Scidmore. 
Subalterns killed. Lieutenant Hugh Allen, Ensign Matthew Brackin & 
Ensign Cundiff ; Subalterns wounded, Lieut. Lane, Lieut. Vance, Lieut. 
Goldman, Lieut. James Robertson ; and about 46 killed and 60 wounded. 
From this sir you may judge that we had a very hard day; its really 
impossible for me to express or you to conceive the acclamations that 
we were under, — sometimes the hideous cries of the enemy, and the 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 201 

groans of our wounded men lying around, was enough to shudder the 
stoutest heart. Its the general opinion of the officers that we shall 
soon have another engagement, as we have now got over into the 
enemy's country. We expect to meet the Governor about forty or 
fifty miles from here. Nothing will save us from another battle, 
unless they attack the Governors party. Five men that came in dadys 
[daddy's] company were killed. I don't know that you were ac- 
quainted with any of them, except Mark Williams who lived with 
Roger Top. Acquaint Mr. Carmack that his son was slightly wounded 
through the shoulder and arm and that he is in a likely way of recov- 
ery. We leave him at the mouth of the Canaway and one very careful 
hand to take care of him. There is a garrison and three hundred men 
left at that place, with a surgeon to heal the wounded. We expect 
to return to the garrison in about l6 days from the Shawny towns. 
I have nothing more particular to acquaint you with concerning the 
battle. As to the country I cannot say much in praise of any that I 
have yet seen. Dady intended writing you, but did not know of the 
express until the time was too short. I have wrote to mammy tho' 
not so fully to you, as I then expected the express was just going. 
We seem to be all in a moving posture, just going from this place, 
so that I must conclude, wishing you health and prosperity until I 
see you and your family. In the meantime I am your truly affectionate 
friend and humble servant, 

Isaac Shelby. 
To Mr. John Shelby, 

Holston River, Fincastle County. 
Favd. by Mr. Benj. Gray. 



II 

(Campbell MSS.) 

October ye 31st. 1774. 
Dear Sir, 

Being on my way home to Fincastle court, was overtaken this eve- 
ning by letters from Colo. Christian and other gentlemen on the expe- 
dition, giving an account of a battle which was fought between our 
troops & the enemy Indians, on the loth instant, in the Fork of the 
Ohio & the great Kanawha. 

The particulars of the action, drawn up by Colo. Andr. Lewis I 
have sent you enclosed, also a return of the killed and wounded, by 
which you will see that we have lost many brave and valiant officers 
& soldiers, whose loss to their families, as well as to the community, 
is very great. 

Colo. Christian with the Fincastle troops (except the companies 
commanded by Capts. Russell & Shelby, who were in the action) were 
on their march; and on the evening of that day, about 15 miles from 
the field of battle, heard that the action began in the morning. They 



202 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

marched hard, and got to the camp about midnight. The cries of the 
wounded, without any persons of skill or anything to nourish people 
in their unhappy situation, was striking. The Indians had crossed the 
river on rafts, 6 or 8 miles above the Forks, in the night, and it is 
believed, intended to attack the camp, had they not been prevented by 
our men marching to meet them at the distance of half a mile. It is 
said the enemy behaved with bravery and great caution, that they 
frequently damned our men for white sons of bitches. Why did they 
not whistle now ? [alluding to the fifes] & that they would learn them 
to shoot. 

The Governor was then at Hockhocking, about 12 or 15 miles below 
the mouth of the Little Kanawha, from whence he intended to march 
his party to a place called Chillicoffee, about 20 miles farther than 
the towns where it was said the Shawneese had assembled with their 
families and allies, to make a stand, as they had good houses and 
plenty of ammunition & provisions & had cleared the woods to a great 
distance from the place. His party who were to march from the camp 
was about 1200, and to join Colo. Lewis' party about 28 miles from 
Chillicoffee. But whether the action above mentioned would discon- 
cert this plan or not, I think appears a little uncertain, as there is a 
probability that his excellency on hearing the news might, with his 
party, fall down the river and join Colo. Lewis' party and march 
together against the enemy. 

They were about building a breastwork at the Forks, & after leav- 
ing a proper party to take care of the wounded & the provisions there, 
that Colo. Lewis could march upwards of a thousand men to join his 
Lordship, so that the whole when they meet will be about 2200 choice 
men. What may be their success God only knows, but it is highly 
probable the matter is decided before this time. 

Colo. Christian says, from the accounts he had the enemy behaved 
with inconceivable bravery. The head men walked about in the time 
of action, exhorting their men "to be close, shoot well, be strong of 
fight." They had parties planted on the opposite side of both rivers 
to shoot our men as they swam over, not doubting, as is supposed, but 
they would gain a complete victory. In the evening late they called 
to our men "that they had 2000 men for them to-morrow, and that 
they had 1100 men now as well as they." They also made very merry 
about a treaty. 

Poor Colo. Charles Lewis was shot on a clear piece of ground, as 
he had not taken a tree, encouraging his men to advance. On being 
wounded he handed his gun to a person nigh him and retired to the 
camp, telling his men as he passed "I am wounded but go on and be 
brave." If the loss of a good man a sincere friend, and a brave officer, 
claims a tear, he certainly is entitled to it. 

Colo. Fields was shot at a great tree by two Indians on his right, 
while one on his left was amusing him with talk and the Colo, endeav- 
oring to get a shot at him. 

Besides the loss the troops met with in action by Colo. Fleming 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 203 

who was obliged to retire from the field, which was very great, the 
wounded met with the most irreparable loss in an able and skillful 
surgeon. Colo. Christian says that his [Flemings] lungs or part of 
them came out of the wound in his breast but were pushed back ; and 
by the last part of his letter, which was dated the i6th. instant, he has 
some hopes of his recovery. 

Thus, sir, I have given you an account of the action from the sev- 
eral letters I reed., and have only to add, that Colo. Christian desires 
me to inform Mrs. Christian of his welfare, which with great pleasure 
I do through this channel, and should any further news come, which 
I must expect soon, I shall take the earliest oppy. of communicating 
the same to you. It is believed the troops will surely return in Nov. 

I write in a hurry and amidst a crowd of inquisitive people, there- 
fore hope you will excuse the inaccuracy of, D'r. Sir, 

Your sincere well wisher & most obedt. Servt., 

Wm. Preston. 

P. S. If you please you may give Mr. Purdie a copy of the enclosed 
papers, & anything else you may think worthy the notice of the Public, 



III 

Logan's speech 

There has been much controversy over the genuineness of Logan's 
speech ; but those who have questioned it have done so with singularly 
little reason. In fact, its authenticity would never have been impugned 
at all had it not (wrongly) blamed Cresap with killing Logan's family. 
Cresap's defenders, with curious folly, have in consequence thought it 
necessary to show, not that Logan was mistaken, but that he never 
delivered the speech at all. 

The truth seems to be that Cresap, without provocation, but after 
being incited to war by Conolly's letter, murdered some peaceful 
Indians, among whom there were certainly some friends and possibly 
some relations of Logan (see testimony of Colonel Ebenezer Zane, in 
Jefferson's "Notes," and "American Pioneer," I, 12; also Clark's letter 
in the Jefferson Papers) ; but that he had no share in the massacre of 
Logan's family at Yellow Creek by Greathouse and his crew two or 
three days afterward. The two massacres occurring so near together, 
however, produced the impression not only among the Indians but 
among many whites (as shown in the body of this work), that Cresap 
had been guilty of both; and this Logan undoubtedly believed, as can 
be seen by the letter he wrote and left tied to a war-club in a mur- 
dered settler's house. This was an injustice to Cresap ; but it was a 
very natural mistake on Logan's part. 

After the speech was recited it attracted much attention; was pub- 
lished in newspapers, periodicals, etc., and was extensively quoted. 



204 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Jefferson, as we learn from his Papers at Washington, took it down 
in 1775, getting it from Lord Dunmore's officers, and published it in 
his "Notes," in 1784; unfortunately, he took for granted that its alle- 
gations as regards Cresap were true, and accordingly prefaced it by a 
very unjust attack on the reputed murderer. Until thirteen years after 
this publication, and until twenty-three years after the speech had been 
published for the first time, no one thought of questioning it. Then 
Luther Martin, of Maryland, attacked its authenticity, partly because 
he was Cresap's son-in-law, and partly because he was a Federalist, 
and a bitter opponent of Jefferson. Like all of his successors in the 
same line, he confused two entirely distinct things, viz., the justice of 
the charge against Cresap, and the authenticity of Logan's speech. 
His controversy with Jefferson grew very bitter. He succeeded in 
showing clearly that Cresap was wrongly accused by Logan; he utterly 
failed to impugn the authenticity of the latter's speech. Jefferson, 
thanks to a letter he received from Clark, must have known that 
Cresap had been accused wrongly ; but he was irritated by the con- 
troversy, and characteristically refrained in any of his publications 
from doing justice to the slandered man's memory. 

A Mr. Jacobs soon afterward wrote a life of Cresap, in which he 
attempted both of the feats aimed at by Martin; it is quite an inter- 
esting production, but exceedingly weak in its arguments. Neville B, 
Craig, in the February, 1847, number of The Olden Time, a historical 
magazine, followed on the same lines. Finally, Brantz Mayer, in his 
very interesting little book, "Logan and Cresap," went over the whole 
matter in a much fairer manner than his predecessors, but still dis- 
tinctly as an advocate ; for though he collected with great industry and 
gave impartially all the original facts (so that from what he gives 
alone it is quite possible to prove that the speech is certainly genuine), 
yet his own conclusions show great bias. Thus, he severely rules out 
any testimony against Cresap that is not absolutely unquestioned; but 
admits without hesitation any and every sort of evidence leaning 
against poor Logan's character or the authenticity of his speech. He 
even goes so far (pp. 122, 123) as to say it is not a "speech" at all — 
although it would puzzle a man to know what else to call it, as he also 
declares it is not a message — and shows the animus of his work by 
making the gratuitous suggestion that if Logan made it at all he was 
probably at the time excited "as well by the cruelties he had com- 
mitted as by liquor." 

It is necessary, therefore, to give a brief summary of a portion of 
the evidence in its favor, as well as of all the evidence against it. 
Je_fferson's "Notes" and Mr. Mayer's book go fully into the matter. 

The evidence in its favor is as follows : 

(i) Gibson's statement. This is the keystone of the arch. John 
Gibson was a man of note and of unblemished character ; he was made 
a general by Washington, and held high appointive positions under 
Madison and Jefferson ; he was also an Associate Judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas in Pennsylvania. Throughout his life he bore a repu- 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 205 

tation for absolute truthfulness. He was the messenger who went to 
Logan, heard the speech, took it down, and gave it to Lord Dunmore. 
We have his deposition, delivered under oath, that "Logan delivered 
to him the speech nearly as related by Mr. Jefferson in his 'Notes,' " 
when the two were alone together, and that he "on his return to camp 
delivered the speech to Lord Dunmore,'" and that he also at the time 
told Logan he was mistaken about Cresap. Brantz Mayer, who accepts 
his statement as substantially true, thinks that he probably only re- 
ported the substance of Logan's speech, or so much of it as he could 
recollect ; but in the State Department at Washington, among the Jef- 
ferson Papers (5-1-4), is a statement by John Anderson, a merchant 
in Fredericksburg, who was an Indian trader at Pittsburgh in 1774; 
he says that he questioned Gibson as to whether he had not himself 
added something to the speech, to which Gibson replied that he had 
not changed it in any way, but had translated it literally, as well as 
he could, though he was unable to come up to the force of the expres- 
sions in the original. 

This evidence itself is absolutely conclusive, except on the supposi- 
tion that Gibson was a malicious and infamous liar. The men who 
argue that the speech was fictitious are also obliged to explain what 
motive there could possibly have been for the deception ; they accord- 
ingly advance the theory that it was part of Dunmore's (imaginary) 
treacherous conduct, as he wished to discredit Cresap, because he knew 
— apparently by divination — that the latter was going to be a whig. 
Even granting the Earl corrupt motives and a prophetic soul, it remains 
to be explained why he should wish to injure an obscure borderer, 
whom nobody has ever heard of except in connection with Logan ; it 
would have served the purpose quite as well to have used the equally 
unknown name of the real offender, Greathouse. The fabrication of 
the speech would have been an absolutely motiveless and foolish trans- 
action, to which Gibson, a pronounced whig, must needs have been a 
party. This last fact shows that there could have been no intention 
of using the speech in the British interest. 

(2) The statement of General George Rogers Clark. (Like the 
preceding this can be seen in the Jefferson Papers.) Clark was pres- 
ent in Dunmore's camp at the time. He says : "Logan's speech to 
Dunmore now came forward as related by Mr. Jefferson and was gen- 
erally believed and indeed not doubted to have been genuine and dic- 
tated by Logan — The Army knew it was wrong so far as it respected 
Cresap, and afforded an opportunity of rallying that Gentleman on 
the subject — I discovered that Cresap was displeased and told him 
that he must be a very great Man, that the Indians shouldered him 
with every thing that had happened. . . . Logan is the author of the 
speech as related by Mr. Jefferson." Clark's remembrance of his 
rallying Cresap shows that the speech contained Cresap's name and 
that it was read before the army ; several other witnesses, whose names 
are not necessary to mention, simply corroborate Clark's statements, 
and a large amount of indirect evidence to the same effect could be 



2o6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

produced were there the least necessity. (See Jefferson's "Notes," the 
"American Pioneer," etc.) 

The evidence against the authenticity of the speech, outside of mere 
conjectures and innuendoes, is as follows: 

(i) Logan called Cresap a colonel when he was really a captain. 
This inability of an Indian to discriminate accurately between these 
two titles of frontier militia officers is actually solemnly brought for- 
ward as telling against the speech. 

(2) Logan accused Cresap of committing a murder which he had 
not committed. But, as we have already seen, Logan had made the 
same accusation in his unquestionably authentic letter, written pre- 
viously ; and many whites, as well as Indians, thought as Logan did. 

(3) A Colonel Benjamin Wilson, who was with Dunmore's army, 
says that "he did not hear the charge preferred in Logan's speech 
against Captain Cresap." This is mere negative evidence, valueless in 
any event, and doubly so in view of Clark's statement. 

(4) Mr. Neville B. Craig, in Olden Time, says in 1847 that "many 
years before a Mr. James McKee, the brother of Mr. William John- 
son's deputy, had told him that he had seen the speech in the hand- 
writing of one of the Johnsons . . . before it was seen by Logan." 
This is a hearsay statement delivered just seventy-three years after the 
event, and it is on its face so wildly improbable as not to need further 
comment, at least until there is some explanation as to why the John- 
sons should have written the speech, how they could possibly have 
gotten it to Logan, and why Gibson should have entered into the con- 
spiracy. 

(5) A Benjamin Tomlinson testifies that he believes that the speech 
was fabricated by Gibson; he hints, but does not frankly assert, that 
Gibson was not sent after Logan, but that Girty was ; and swears that 
he heard the speech read three times and that the name of Cresap was 
not mentioned in it. 

He was said in later life to bear a good reputation; but in his deposi- 
tion he admits under oath that he was present at the Yellow Creek 
murder (Olden Time, II, 61; the editor, by the way, seems to call 
him alternately Joseph and Benjamin) ; and he was therefore an 
unconvicted criminal, who connived at or participated in one of the 
most brutal and cowardly deeds ever done on the frontier. His state- 
ment as against Gibson's would be worthless anyhow ; fortunately, his 
testimony as to the omission of Cresap's name from the speech is also 
flatly contradicted by Clark. With the words of two such men against 
his, and bearing in mind that all that he says against the authenticity 
of the speech itself is confessedly mere supposition on his part, his 
statement must be promptly set aside as worthless. If true, by the 
way, it would conflict with (4) Craig's statement. 

This is literally all the "evidence" against the speech. It scarcely 
needs serious discussion ; it may be divided into two parts — one con- 
taining allegations that are silly, and the other those that are discredited. 

There is probably very little additional evidence to be obtained, on 



BATTLE OF THE GREAT KANAWHA 207 

one side or the other; it is all in, and Logan's speech can be unhesi- 
tatingly pronounced authentic. Doubtless there have been verbal alter- 
ations in it ; there is not extant a report of any famous speech which 
does not probably differ in some way from the words as they were 
actually spoken. There is also a good deal of confusion as to whether 
the council took place in the Indian town, or in Dunmore's camp ; 
whether Logan was sought out alone in his hut by Gibson, or came 
up and drew the latter aside while he was at the council, etc. In the 
same way, we have excellent authority for stating that, prior to the 
battle of the Great Kanawha, Lewis reached the mouth of that river 
on October ist, and that he reached it on October 6th; that on the 
day of the attack the troops marched from camp a quarter of a mile, 
and that they marched three-quarters ; that the Indians lost more men 
than the whites, and that they lost fewer; that Lewis behaved well, 
and that he behaved badly ; that the whites lost 140 men, and that they 
lost 215, etc. The conflict of evidence as to the dates and accessory 
details of Logan's speech is no greater than it is as to the dates and 
accessory details of the murder by Greathouse, or as to all the pre- 
liminaries of the main battle of the campaign. Coming from back- 
woods sources, it is inevitable that we should have confusion on points 
of detail ; but as to the main question there seems almost as little 
reason for doubting the authenticity of Logan's speech, as for doubt- 
ing the reality of the battle of the Great Kanawha. 



CHAPTER X 
BOONE AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 

1775 

LORD DUNMORE'S war, waged by Americans for 
the good of America, was the opening act in the drama 
whereof the closing scene was played at Yorktown. It 
made possible the twofold character of the Revolutionary War, 
wherein on the one hand the Americans won by conquest and 
colonization new lands for their children, and on the other 
wrought out their national independence of the British king. 
Save for Lord Dunmore's war, we could not have settled be- 
yond the mountains until after we had ended our quarrel with 
our kinsfolk across the sea. It so cowed the Northern Indians 
that for two or three years they made no further organized 
effort to check the white advance. In consequence, the Ken- 
tucky pioneers had only to contend with small parties of ene- 
mies until time had been given them to become so firmly rooted 
in the land that it proved impossible to oust them. Had Corn- 
stalk and his fellow chiefs kept their hosts unbroken, they 
would undoubtedly have swept Kentucky clear of settlers in 
1775 — as was done by the mere rumor of their hostility the 
preceding summer. Their defeat gave the opportunity for 
Boone to settle Kentucky, and therefore for Robertson to settle 
Middle Tennessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the 
Northwest ; it was the first in the chain that gave us for our 
Western frontier in 1783 the Mississippi and not the Alle- 
ghanies. 

As already mentioned, the speculative North Carolinian Hen- 
derson had for some time been planning the establishment of 
a proprietary colony beyond the mountains, as a bold stroke 

208 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 209 

to re-establish his ruined fortunes; and early in 1775, as the 
time seemed favorable, he proceeded to put his venturous 
scheme into execution. For years he had been in close rela- 
tions with Boone; and the latter had attempted to lead a band 
of actual settlers to Kentucky in 1773. Naturally, when Hen- 
derson wished to fix on a place wherein to plant his colony, 
he chose the beautiful land which the rumor of Boone's dis- 
covery had rendered famous all along the border; and equally 
naturally he chose the pioneer hunter himself to act as his 
lieutenant and as the real leader of the expedition. The re- 
sult of the joint efforts of these two men was to plant in Ken- 
tucky a colony of picked settlers, backed by such moral and 
material support as enabled them to maintain themselves per- 
manently in the land. Boone had not been the first to discover 
Kentucky, nor was he the first to found a settlement therein ;^ 
but it was his exploration of the land that alone bore lasting 
fruit, and the settlement he founded was the first that con- 
tained within itself the elements of permanence and growth. 
Of course, as in every other settlement of inland America, 
the especial point to be noticed is the individual initiative of 
the different settlers. Neither the royal nor the provincial gov- 
ernments had anything to do with the various colonies that 
were planted almost simultaneously on the soil of Kentucky. 
Each little band of pioneers had its own leaders and was 
stirred by its own motives. All had heard, from different 
sources, of the beauty and fertility of the land, and as the 
great danger from the Indians was temporarily past, all alike 
went in to take possession, not only acting without previ- 
ous agreement, but for the most part being even in ignorance 
of one another's designs. Yet the dangers surrounding these 
new-formed and far-off settlements were so numerous and of 
such grave nature, that they could hardly have proved perma- 
nent had it not been for the comparatively well-organized set- 

*The first permanent settlement was Harrodsburg, then called Harrods- 
town, founded in 1774, but soon abandoned, and only permanently occupied 
on March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boone began the erection of his fort. 



210 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tlement of Boone, and for the temporay immunity which Hen- 
derson's treaty purchased from the Southern Indians. 

The settlement of Kentucky was a much more adventurous 
and hazardous proceeding than had been the case with any 
previous westward extension of population from the old colo- 
nies ; because Kentucky, instead of abutting on already settled 
districts, was an island in the wilderness, separated by two hun- 
dred miles of unpeopled and almost impassable forest from 
even the extreme outposts of the seacoast commonwealths. 
Hitherto every new settlement had been made by the simple 
process of a portion of the backwoods pioneers being thrust 
out in advance of the others, while nevertheless keeping in 
touch with them, and having their rear covered, as it were, by 
the already colonized country. Now, for the first time, a new 
community of pioneers sprang up, isolated in the heart of 
the wilderness and thrust far beyond the uttermost limits of 
the old colonies, whose solid mass lay along the Atlantic sea- 
board. The vast belt of mountainous woodland that lay be- 
tween was as complete a barrier as if it had been a broad arm 
of the ocean. The first American incomers to Kentucky were 
for several years almost cut off from the bulk of their fellows 
beyond the forest-clad mountains, much as, thirteen centuries 
before, their forebears, the first English settlers in Britain, 
had been cut off from the rest of the Low Dutch folk who 
continued to dwell on the eastern coast of the German Ocean. 
Henderson, and those associated with him in his scheme of 
land speculation, began to open negotiations with the Chero- 
kees as soon as the victory of the Great Kanawha for the 
moment lessened the danger to be apprehended from the north- 
western Indians. In October, 1774, he and Nathaniel Hart, 
one of his partners in the scheme, journeyed to the Otari towns 
and made their proposals. The Indians proceeded very cau- 
tiously, deputing one of their number, a chief called the Car- 
penter, to return with the two white envoys and examine the 
goods they proposed to give in exchange. To this Henderson 
made no objection; on the contrary, it pleased him, for he was 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 211 

anxious to get an indisputable Indian title to the proposed new 
colony. The Indian delegate made a favorable report in Jan- 
uary, 1775; and then the Overhill Cherokees were bidden to 
assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. The order 
was issued by the head chief, Oconostota, a very old man, re- 
nowned for the prowess he had shown in former years when 
warring against the English. On the 17th of March, Oconos- 
tota and two other chiefs, the Raven and the Carpenter, signed 
the treaty of the Sycamore Shoals in the presence and with 
the assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe, half of them 
warriors ; for all who could had come to the treaty grounds. 
Henderson thus obtained a grant of all the lands lying along and 
between the Kentucky and the Cumberland rivers. He promptly 
named the new colony Transylvania. The purchase money 
was ten thousand pounds of lawful English money; but, of 
course, the payment was made mainly in merchandise and not 
specie. It took a number of days before the treaty was finally 
concluded ; no rum was allowed to be sold, and there was little 
drunkenness; but herds of beeves were driven in, that the In- 
dians might make a feast. 

The main opposition to the treaty was made by a chief named 
Dragging Canoe, who continued for years to be the most in- 
veterate foe of the white race to be found among the Cherokees. 
On the second day of the talk he spoke strongly against 
granting the Americans what they asked, pointing out, in words 
of glowing eloquence, how the Cherokees, who had once owned 
the land down to the sea, had been steadily driven back by the 
whites until they had reached the mountains, and warning his 
comrades that they must now put a stop at all hazards to 
further encroachments, under penalty of seeing the loss of 
their last hunting-grounds, by which alone their children could 
live. When he had finished his speech, he abruptly left the 
ring of speakers, and the council broke up in confusion. The 
Indian onlookers were much impressed by what he said; and 
for some hours the whites were in dismay lest all further nego- 
tiations should Drove fruitless. It was proposed to get the 



212 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

deed privately; but to this the treaty-makers would not con- 
sent, answering that they cared nothing for the treaty unless 
it was conluded in open council, with the full assent of all the 
Indians. By much exertion. Dragging Canoe was finally per- 
suaded to come back; the council was resumed next day, and 
finally the grant was made without further opposition. The 
Indians chose their own interpreter; and the treaty was read 
aloud and translated, sentence by sentence, before it was signed, 
on the fourth day of the formal talking. 

The chiefs undoubtedly knew that they could transfer only 
a very imperfect title to the land they thus deeded away. Both 
Oconostota and Dragging Canoe told the white treaty-makers 
that the land beyond the mountains, whither they were going, 
was a "dark ground," a "bloody ground"; and warned them 
that they must go at their own risk and not hold the Chero- 
kees responsible, for the latter could no longer hold them by 
the hand. Dragging Canoe especially told Henderson that 
there was a black cloud hanging over the land, for it lay in 
the path of the northwestern Indians — who were already at 
war with the Cherokees, and would surely show as little mercy 
to the white men as to the red. Another old chief said to 
Boone : "Brother, we have given you a fine land, but I believe 
you will have much trouble in settling it." What he said 
was true, and the whites were taught by years of long warfare 
that Kentucky was indeed what the Cherokees called it, a 
dark and bloody ground.^ 

After Henderson's main treaty was concluded, the Watauga 
Association entered into another, by which they secured from 

* The whole account of this treaty is taken from the Jefferson MSS., 
5th Series, vol. VIII ; "A copy of the proceedings of the Virginia Conven- 
tion, from June 15 to November 19, 1777, in relation to the Memorial of 
Richard Henderson, and others"; especially from the depositions of James 
Robertson, Isaac Shelby, Charles Robertson, Nathaniel Gist, and Thomas 
Price, who were all present. There is much interesting matter aside from 
the treaty; Simon Girty makes depositions as to Braddock's defeat and 
Bouquet's fight ; Lewis, Croghan, and others show the utter vagueness and 
conflict of the Indian titles to Kentucky, etc. Though the Cherokees spoke 
of the land as a "dark" or "bloody" place or ground, it does not seem 
tliat by either of these terms they referred to the actual meaning of the 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 213 

the Cherokees, for two thousand pounds sterling, the lands 
they had already leased. 

As soon as it became evident that the Indians would consent 
to the treaty, Henderson sent Boone ahead with a company of 
thirty men to clear a trail from the Holston to the Kentucky.^ 
This, the first regular path opened into the wilderness, was long 
called Boone's trace, and became forever famous in Ken- 
tucky history as the Wilderness Road, the track along which 
so many tens of thousands travelled while journeying to their 
hoped-for homes in the bountiful West. Boone started on 
March loth with his sturdy band of rifle-bearing axemen, 
and chopped out a narrow bridle-path — a pony trail, as it 
would now be called in the West. It led over Cumberland 
Gap and crossed Cumberland, Laurel, and Rockcastle rivers 
at fords that were swimming deep in the time of freshets. 
Where it went through tall, open timber, it was marked by 
blazes on the tree trunks, while a regular path was cut and 
trodden out through the thickets of underbrush and the dense 
cane-brakes and reed-beds. 

After a fortnight's hard work the party had almost reached 
the banks of the Kentucky River, and deemed that their chief 
trials were over. But half an hour before daybreak on the 
morning of the 25th, as they lay round their smouldering 
camp-fires, they were attacked by some Indians, who killed 
two of them and wounded a third; the others sprang to arms 
at once and stood their ground without suffering further 

name Kentucky. One or two of the witnesses tried to make out that the 
treaty was unfairly made; but the bulk of the evidence is overwhelmingly 
the other way. 

Haywood gives a long speech made by Oconostota against the treaty ; 
but this original report shows that Oconostota favored the treaty from the 
outset, and that it was Dragging Canoe who spoke against it. Haywood 
wrote fifty years after the event, and gathered many of his facts from 
tradition ; probably tradition had become confused and reversed the posi- 
tion of the two chiefs. Haywood purports to give almost the exact lan- 
guage Oconostota used ; but when he is in error even as to who made 
the speech, he is exceedingly unlikely to be correct in anything more than 
its general tenor. 

^ Then sometimes called the Louisa — a name given it at first by the 
English explorers, but by great good fortune not retained. 



214 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

loss or damage till it grew light, when the Indians silently 
drew off.^ Continuing his course, Boone reached the Ken- 
tucky River, and on April ist began to build Boonesborough, 
on an open plain where there was a lick with two sulphur 
springs. 

Meanwhile, other pioneers, as hardy and enterprising as 
Boone's companions, had likewise made up their minds that 
they would come in to possess the land ; and in bands or small 
parties they had crossed the mountains or floated down the 
Ohio, under the leadership of such men as Harrod, Logan," 
and the McAfees.^ But hardly had they built their slight log 
cabins, covered with brush or bark, and broken ground for 
the corn-planting, when some small Indian war-parties, includ- 
ing that which had attacked Boone's company, appeared among 
them. Several men were "killed and sculped," as Boone 
phrased it; and the panic among the rest was very great, in- 
somuch that many forthwith set out to return. Boone was 
not so easily daunted ; and he at once sent a special messenger 
to hurry forward the main body under Henderson, writing to 
the latter with quiet resolution and much good sense : 

"My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as pos- 
sible. Your company is desired greatly for the people are very 
uneasy, but are willing to stay and venture their lives with 
you, and now is the time to flusterate [frustrate?] the inten- 
tions of the Indians, and keep the country whilst we are in 
it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case." * 

Henderson had started off as soon as he had finished the 

^Collins, II, 498. Letter of Daniel Boone, April i, 1775. Collins has 
done good work for Kentucky history, having collected a perfect mass of 
materials of every sort. But he does not discriminate between facts of 
undoubted authenticity and tales resting on the idlest legend ; so that he 
must be used with caution, and he is, of course, not to be trusted where 
he is biassed by the extreme rancor of his political prejudices. Of the 
Kentucky historians, Marshall is by far the most brilliant, and Mann 
Butler the most trustworthy and impartial. Both are much better than 
Collins. 

'Benjamin Logan; there were many of the family in Kentucky. It was 
a common name along the border ; the Indian chief, Logan, had been 
named after one of the Pennsylvania branch. 

'McAfee MSS. * Boone's letter. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 215 

treaty. He took wagons with him, but was obliged to halt 
and leave them in Powell's Valley, for beyond that even so 
skilful a pathfinder and road-maker as Boone had not been 
able to find or make a way passable for wheels.^ Accord- 
ingly, their goods and implements were placed on pack-horses 
and the company started again." Most fortunately, a full ac- 
count of their journey has been kept ; for among Henderson's 
followers at this time was a man named William Calk, who 
jotted down in his diary the events of each day.^ It is a short 
record, but as amusing as it is instructive; for the writer's 
mind was evidently as vigorous as his language was terse and 
untrammelled. He was with a small party who were going 
out as partners ; and his journal is a faithful record of all 
things, great or small, that at the time impressed him. The 
opening entry contains the information that "Abram's dog's 
leg got broke by Drake's dog." The owner of the latter beast, 
by the way, could not have been a pleasant companion on a trip 
of this sort, for elsewhere the writer, who, like most back- 
woodsmen, appreciated cleanliness in essentials, records with 
evident disfavor the fact that "Mr. Drake Bakes bread without 
washing his hands." Every man who has had the misfortune 
to drive a pack-train in thick timber, or along a bad trail, 
will appreciate keenly the following incident, which occurred 
soon after the party had set out for home : 

*T turned my hors to drive before me and he got scard 
ran away threw Down the Saddel Bags and broke three of 
our powder goards and Abram's beast Burst open a walet of 
corn and lost a good Deal and made a turrabel flustration 
amongst the Reast of the Horses Drake's mair run against a 
sapling and noct it down we cacht them all again and went on 
and lodged at John Duncan's." 

^ Richard Henderson's "Journal of an Expedition to Cantucky in 1775" 
(Collins). 

^ April 5th. 

" It is printed in the Filson Club Publications ; see "The Wilderness 
Road," by Thomas Speed, Louisville, Ky., 1886, one of the best of an 
excellent series. 



2i6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Another entry records the satisfaction of the party when 
at a log fort (before getting into the wilderness) they pro- 
cured some good loaf-bread and good whiskey. 

They carried with them seed-corn ^ and "Irish tators" to 
plant, and for use on the journey had bacon, and corn-meal, 
which was made either into baked corn-dodgers or else into 
johnny-cakes, which were simply cooked on a board beside the 
fire, or else perhaps on a hot stone or in the ashes. The meal 
had to be used very sparingly; occasionally a beef was killed 
out of the herd of cattle that accompanied the emigrants; 
but generally they lived on the game they shot — deer, turkeys, 
and, when they got to Kentucky, buffaloes. Sometimes this 
was killed as they travelled; more often the hunters got it 
by going out in the evening after they had pitched camp. 

The journey was hard and tiresome. At times it rained; 
and again there were heavy snow-storms, in one of which an 
emigrant got lost and only found his way to camp by the help 
of a pocket-compass. The mountains were very steep, and it 
was painfully laborious work to climb them while chopping 
out a way for the pack-train. At night a watch had to be kept 
for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts got 
good grazing. Sometimes the horses had their saddles turned 
while struggling through the woods. But the great difficulty 
came in crossing the creeks, where the banks were rotten, the 
bottom bad, or the water deep; then the horses would get 
mired down and wet their packs, or they would have to be 
swum across while their loads were ferried over on logs. One 
day, in going along a creek, they had to cross it no less than 
fifty times by "very bad foards." 

On the 7th of April they were met by Boone's runner, bear- 
ing tidings of the loss occasioned by the Indians; and from 
that time on they met parties of would-be settlers, who, panic- 
struck by the sudden forays, were fleeing from the country. 
Henderson's party kept on with good courage, and persuaded 

* It is not necessary to say that "corn" means maize ; Americans do not 
use the word in the sense in which it is employed in Britain. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 217 

quite a number of the fugitives to turn back with them. Some 
of these men who were thus leaving the country were not doing 
so because of fright; for many, among them the McAfees, 
had not brought out their famihes, but had simply come to 
clear the ground, build cabins, plant corn, and turn some 
branded cattle loose in the woods, where they were certain to 
thrive well, winter and summer, on the nourishing cane and 
wild pea-vine. The men then intended to go back to the 
settlements and bring out their wives and children, perhaps not 
till the following year; so that things were in a measure pre- 
pared for them, though they were very apt to find that the 
cattle had been stolen by the Indians, or had strayed too far 
to be recovered.^ 

The bulk of those fleeing, however, were simply frightened 
out of the country. There seems no reason to doubt ^ that 
the establishment of the strong, well-backed settlement of 
Boonesborough was all that prevented the abandonment of 
Kentucky at this time ; and when such was the effect of a foray 
by small and scattered war-parties of Indians from tribes nomi- 
nally at peace with us,^ it can easily be imagined how hopeless 
it would have been to have tried to settle the land had there 
still been in existence a strong hostile confederacy such as 
that presided over by Cornstalk. Beyond doubt the restless 
and vigorous frontiersmen would ultimately have won their 
way into the coveted Western lands ; yet had it not been for 
the battle of the Great Kanawha, Boone and Henderson could 
not, in 1775, have planted their colony in Kentucky; and had it 

* McAfee MSS. Some of the McAfees returned with Henderson. 

^Boone's letter, Henderson's journal, Calk's diary, McAfee's autobiog- 
raphy, all mention the way in which the early settlers began to swarm 
out of the country in April, 1775. To judge from their accounts, if the 
movement had not been checked instantly the country would have been 
depopulated in a fortnight, exactly as in 1774. 

^ It must be remembered that the outrages of the Indians this year in 
Kentucky were totally unprovoked ; they were on lands where they did not 
themselves dwell, and which had been regularly ceded to the whites by 
all the tribes — Iroquois, Shawnees, Cherokees, etc. — whom the whites could 
possibly consider as having any claim to them. The wrath of the Ken- 
tuckians against all Indians is easily understood. 



2i8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

not been for Boone and Henderson, it is most unlikely that the 
land would have been settled at all until after the Revolu- 
tionary War, when perhaps it might have been British soil. 
Boone was essentially a type, and possesses his greatest in- 
terest for us because he represents so well the characteristics 
as well as the life-work of his fellow backwoodsmen; still, it 
is unfair not to bear in mind also the leading part he played 
and the great services he rendered to the nation. 

The incomers soon recovered from the fright into which 
they had been thrown by the totally unexpected Indian attack ; 
but the revengeful anger it excited in their breasts did not 
pass away. They came from a class already embittered by 
long warfare with their forest foes ; they hoarded up their 
new wrongs in minds burdened with the memories of count- 
less other outrages; and it is small wonder that repeated and 
often unprovoked treachery at last excited in them a fierce and 
indiscriminate hostility to all the red-skinned race. They had 
come to settle on ground to which, as far as it was possible, 
the Indian title had been by fair treaty extinguished. They 
ousted no Indians from the lands they took; they had had 
neither the chance nor the wish to themselves do wrong; in 
their eyes the attack on the part of the Indians was as wanton 
as it was cruel ; and in all probability this view was correct, and 
their assailants were actuated more by the desire for scalps 
and plunder than by resentment at the occupation of hunting- 
grounds to which they could have had little claim. In fact, 
throughout the history of the discovery and first settlement 
of Kentucky, the original outrages and murders were com- 
mitted by the Indians on the whites, and not by the whites 
on the Indians. In the gloomy and ferocious wars that en- 
sued, the wrongs done by each side were many and great. 

Henderson's company came into the beautiful Kentucky 
country in mid-April, when it looked its best: the trees were 
in leaf, the air heavy with fragrance, the snowy flowers 
of the dogwood whitened the woods, and the banks of the 
streams burned dull crimson with the wealth of red-bud bios- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 219 

soms. The travellers reached the fort that Boone was build- 
ing on the 20th of the month, being welcomed to the protection 
of its wooden walls by a volley from twenty or thirty rifles. 
They at once set to with a will to finish it, and to make it 
a strong place of refuge against Indian attacks. It was a 
typical forted village, such as the frontiersmen built every- 
where in the West and Southwest during the years that they 
were pushing their way across the continent in the teeth of 
fierce and harassing warfare ; in some features it was not 
unlike the hamlet-like "tun" in which the forefathers of these 
same pioneers dwelt, long centuries before, when they still 
lived by the sluggish waters of the lower Rhine, or had just 
crossed to the eastern coast of Britain.^ 

The fort was in shape a parallelogram, some two hundred 
and fifty feet long and half as wide. It was more completely 
finished than the majority of its kind, though little or no iron 
was used in its construction. At each corner was a two- 
storied loopholed blockhouse to act as a bastion. The stout 
log cabins were arranged in straight lines, so that their outer 
sides formed part of the wall, the spaces between them being 
filled with a high stockade, made of heavy squared timbers 
thrust upright into the ground and bound together within by 
a horizontal stringer near the top. They were loopholed like 
the blockhouses. The heavy wooden gates, closed with stout 
bars, were flanked without by the blockhouses and within by 
small windows cut in the nearest cabins. The houses had 
sharp sloping roofs, made of huge clayboards, and these great 
wooden slabs were kept in place by long poles, bound with 
withes to the rafters. In case of dire need each cabin was 
separately defensible. When danger threatened, the cattle were 
kept in the open space in the middle. 

Three other similar forts or stations were built about the 
same time as Boonesborough, namely: Harrodstown, Boiling 
Springs, and St. Asaphs, better known as Logan's Station, 

*When the blockhouse and palisade enclosed the farm of a single set- 
tler, the "tun," in its still earlier sense, was even more nearly reproduced. 



220 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

from its founder's name. These all lay to the southwest, some 
thirty-odd miles from Boonesborough. Every such fort or 
station served as the rallying-place for the country roundabout, 
the stronghold in which the people dwelt during time of dan- 
ger; and later on, when all danger had long ceased, it often 
remained in changed form, growing into the chief town of the 
district. Each settler had his own farm besides, often a 
long way from the fort, and it was on this that he usually 
intended to make his permanent home. This system enabled 
the inhabitants to combine for defense, and yet to take up the 
large tracts of four to fourteen hundred acres ^ to which they 
were by law entitled. It permitted them in time of peace to 
live well apart, with plenty of room between, so that they 
did not crowd one another — a fact much appreciated by men 
in whose hearts the spirit of extreme independence and self- 
reliance was deeply ingrained. Thus the settlers were scattered 
over large areas, and, as elsewhere in the Southwest, the 
country and not the town became the governmental unit. The 
citizens even of the smaller governmental divisions acted 
through representatives, instead of directly, as in the New 
England town meetings.^ The centre of county government 
was, of course, the county court-house. 

Henderson, having established a land agency at Boones- 
borough, at once proceeded to deed to the Transylvania col- 
onists entry certificates of surveys of many hundred thousand 
acres. Most of the colonists were rather doubtful whether 
these certificates would ultimately prove of any value, and 
preferred to rest their claims on their original cabin rights; a 

* Four hundred acres were gained at the price of $2.50 per one hundred 
acres, by merely building a cabin and raising a crop of corn ; and every 
settler with such a "cabin right" had likewise a pre-emption right to one 
thousand acres adjoining, for a cost that generally approached forty 
dollars a hundred. 

Mn Mr. Phelan's scholarly "History of Tennessee," pp. 202-204, etc., 
there is an admirably clear account of the way in which Tennessee insti- 
ttitinns (like those of the rest of the Southwest) have been directly and 
without a break derived from English institutions ; whereas many of those 
of New England are rather pre-Normanic revivals, curiously paralleled in 
England as it was before the Conquest. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 221 

wise move on their part, though in the end the Virginia 
legislature confirmed Henderson's sales in so far as they 
had been made to actual settlers. All the surveying was, of 
course, of the very rudest kind. Only a skilled woodsman 
could undertake the work in such a country; and, accordingly, 
much of it devolved on Boone, who ran the lines as well as 
he could and marked the trees with his own initials, either 
by powder or else with his knife.^ The State could not un- 
dertake to make the surveys itself, so it authorized the in- 
dividual settler to do so. This greatly promoted the rapid 
settlement of the country, making it possible to deal with 
land as a commodity, and outlining the various claims, but 
the subsequent ^nd inevitable result was that the sons of the 
settlers reaped a crop of endless confusion and litigation. 

It is worth mentioning that the Transylvania company 
opened a store at Boonesborough. Powder and lead, the two 
commodities most in demand, were sold respectively for $2.66% 
and 1673 cents per pound. The payment was rarely made 
in coin; and how high the above prices were may be gathered 
from the fact that ordinary labor was credited at 33% cents 
per day, while fifty cents a day was paid for ranging, hunting, 
and working on the roads." 

Henderson immediately proceeded to organize the govern- 
ment of his colony, and accordingly issued a call for an election 
of delegates to the legislature of Transylvania, each of the 
four stations mentioned above sending members. The dele- 
gates, seventeen in all, met at Boonesborough and organized 
the convention on the 23d of May. Their meetings were held 
without the walls of the fort, on a level plain of white clover, 
under a grand old elm. Beneath its mighty branches a hun- 
dred people could without crowding find refuge from the 
noonday sun; 'twas a fit council-house for this pioneer legis- 
lature of game-hunters and Indian fighters.^ 

* Boone's deposition, July 29, 1795. 'Mann Butler, p. 31. 

' Henderson's journal. The beauty of the elm impressed him very 
greatly. According to the list of names eighteen, not seventeen, members 
were elected; but apparently only seventeen took part in the proceedings. 



222 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, who held their 
dehberations in the open air, showed that they had in them 
good stuff out of which to build a free government. They 
were men of genuine force of character, and they behaved with 
a dignity and wisdom that would have well become any legis- 
lative body. Henderson, on behalf of the proprietors of Tran- 
sylvania, addressed them, much as a crown governor would 
have done. The portion of his address dealing with the de- 
struction of game is worth noting. Buffalo, elk, and deer had 
abounded immediately round Boonesborough when the settlers 
first arrived, but the slaughter had been so great that even 
after the first six weeks the hunters began to find some diffi- 
culty in getting anything without going off some fifteen or 
twenty miles. However, stray buffaloes were still killed near 
the fort once or twice a week.^ Calk, in his journal, quoted 
above, in the midst of entries about his domestic work — such 
as, on April 29th "we git our house kivered with bark and 
move our things into it at Night and Begin housekeeping"; 
and, on May 2d, "went and sot in to clearing for corn" — 
mentions occasionally killing deer and turkey; and once, while 
looking for a strayed mare, he saw four "bofelos." He 
wounded one, but failed to get it, with the luck that generally 
attended backwoods hunters when they for the first time 
tried their small-bore rifles against these huge, shaggy-maned 
wild cattle. 

As Henderson pointed out, the game was the sole depend- 
ence of the first settlers, who, most of the time, lived solely 
on wild meat, even the parched corn having been exhausted ; 
and without game the newcomers could not have stayed in 
the land a week.- Accordingly, he advised the enactment of 
game-laws ; and he was especially severe in his comments upon 
the "foreignors" who came into the country merely to hunt, 
killing off the wild beasts and taking their skins and furs 

^ Henderson's journal. 

'"Our game, the only support of life amongst many of us, and without 
which the country would be abandoned ere to-morrow." — Henderson's 
address. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 223 

away, for the benefit of persons not concerned in the set- 
tlement. This last point is curious as showing how instantly 
and naturally the colonists succeeded not only to the lands 
of the Indians, but also to their habits of thought; regarding 
intrusion by outsiders upon their hunting-grounds with the 
same jealous dislike so often shown by their red-skinned prede- 
cessors. 

Henderson also outlined some of the laws he thought it ad- 
visable to enact, and the legislature followed his advice. They 
provided for courts of law, for regulating the militia, for pun- 
ishing criminals, fixing sheriffs' and clerks' fees, and issuing 
writs of attachment.^ One of the members was a clergyman: 
owing to him a law was passed forbidding profane swearing 
or Sabbath-breaking — a puritanic touch which showed the 
mountain rather than the seaboard origin of the men settling 
Kentucky. The three remaining laws the legislature enacted 
were much more characteristic, and were all introduced by the 
two Boones — for Squire Boone was still the companion of his 
brother. As was fit and proper, it fell to the lot of the greatest 
of backwods hunters to propose a scheme for game protection, 
which the legislature immediately adopted; and his was like- 
wise the "act for preserving the breed of horses" — for from the 
very outset, the Kentuckians showed the love for fine horses 
and for horse-racing which has ever since distinguished them. 
Squire Boone was the author of a law "to protect the range" ; 
for the preservation of the range or natural pasture over 
which the branded horses and cattle of the pioneers ranged 
at will was as necessary to the welfare of the stock as the 
preservation of the game was to the welfare of the men. In 
Kentucky the range was excellent, abounding not only in fine 
grass, but in cane and wild peas, and the animals grazed 
on it throughout the year. Fires sometimes utterly destroyed 
immense tracts of this pasture, causing heavy loss to the set- 

^ Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates or Representa- 
tives of the Colony of Transylvania. 



224 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tiers; and one of the first cares of pioneer legislative bodies 
was to guard against such accidents. 

It was likewise stipulated that there should be complete re- 
ligious freedom and toleration for all sects. This seems nat- 
ural enough now, but in the eighteenth century the precedents 
were the other way. Kentucky showed its essentially American 
character in nothing more than the diversity of religious belief 
among the settlers from the very start. They came almost 
entirely from the backwoods mountaineers of Virginia, Penn- 
sylvania, and North Carolina, among whom the predominant 
faith had been Presbyterianism ; but from the beginning they 
were occasionally visited by Baptist preachers,^ whose creed 
spread to the borders sooner than Methodism ; and among the 
original settlers of Harrodsburg were some Catholic Mary- 
landers.^ The first service ever held in Kentucky was by a 
clergymen of the Church of England, soon after Henderson's 
arrival ; but this was merely owing to the presence of Hender- 
son himself, who, it must be remembered, was not in the least 
a backwoods product. He stood completely isolated from the 
other immigrants during his brief existence as a pioneer, and 
had his real relationship with the old English founders of 
the proprietary colonies and with the more modern American 
land speculators, whose schemes are so often mentioned during 
the last half of the eighteenth century. Episcopacy was an 
exotic in the backwoods ; it did not take real root in Kentucky 
till long after that commonwealth had emerged from the 
pioneer stage. 

When the Transylvania legislature dissolved, never to meet 
again, Henderson had nearly finished playing his short but im- 
portant part in the founding of Kentucky. He was a man of 
the seacoast regions, who had little in common with the back- 
woodsmen by whom he was surrounded ; he came from a com- 
paratively old and sober community, and he could not grapple 

I Possibly in 1775, certainly in 1776; MS. Autobiography of Rev. William 
Hickman, in Durrett's library. 

'"Life of Rev. Charles Nerinckx," by Rev. Camillus P. Maes, Cincin- 
nati, 1880, p. 67. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 225 

with his new associates ; in his journal he alluded to them as a 
set of scoundrels who scarcely believed in God or feared the 
devil. A British friend ^ of his, who at this time visited the 
settlement, also described the pioneers as being a lawless, nar- 
row-minded, unpolished, and utterly insubordinate set, impa- 
tient of all restraint, and relying in every difficulty upon 
their individual might; though he grudgingly admitted that 
they were frank, hospitable, energetic, daring, and possessed 
of much common sense. Of course, it was hopeless to expect 
that such bold spirits, as they conquered the wilderness, would 
be content to hold it even at a small quit-rent from Hender- 
son. But the latter's colony was toppled over by a thrust from 
without before it had time to be rent in sunder by violence 
from within. 

Transylvania was between two millstones. The settlers re- 
volted against its authority and appealed to Virginia, and 
meanwhile Virginia, claiming the Kentucky country, and North 
Carolina, as mistress of the lands round the Cumberland, pro- 
claimed the purchase of the Transylvania proprietors null and 
void as regards themselves, though valid as against the In- 
dians. The title conveyed by the latter thus enured to the 
benefit of the colonies; it having been our policy, both before 
and since the Revolution, not to permit any of our citizens 
to individually purchase lands from the savages. 

Lord Dunmore denounced Henderson and his acts ; and it 
was in vain that the Transylvanians appealed to the Continental 
Congress, asking leave to send a delegate thereto, and assert- 
ing their devotion to the American cause; for Jefferson and 
Patrick Henry were members of that body, and, though they 
agreed with Lord Dunmore in nothing else, were quite as de- 
termined as he that Kentucky should remain part of Virginia. 
So Transylvania's fitful life flickered out of existence, the Vir- 
ginia legislature in 1778 solemnly annulling the title of the 
company, but very properly recompensing the originators by 

* Smyth, p. 330. 



226 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the gift of two hundred thousand acres. ^ North CaroHna 
pursued a precisely similar course; and Henderson, after the 
collapse of his colony, drifts out of history. 

Boone remained, to be for some years one of the Kentucky 
leaders. Soon after the fort at Boonesborough was built, he 
went back to North Carolina for his family, and in the fall 
returned, bringing out a band of new settlers, including twenty- 
seven "guns" — that is, rifle-bearing men — and four women, 
with their families, the first who came to Kentucky, though 
others shortly followed in their steps." A few roving hunters 
and daring pioneer settlers also came to his fort in the fall ; 
among them, the famous scout, Simon Kenton, and John 
Todd,^ a man of high and noble character and well-trained 
mind, who afterward fell by Boone's side when in command 
at the fatal battle of Blue Licks. In this year, also, Clark ^ 
and Shelby ^ first came to Kentucky ; and many other men 
whose names became famous in frontier story, and whose suf- 
ferings and long wanderings, whose strength, hardihood, and 
fierce daring, whose prowess as Indian fighters and killers of 
big game, were told by the firesides of Kentucky to generations 
born when the elk and the buffalo had vanished from her 
borders as completely as the red Indian himself. Each leader 
gathered round him a little party of men, who helped him 
build the fort which was to be the stronghold of the district. 
Among the earliest of these town-builders were Hugh McGarry, 
James Harrod, and Benjamin Logan. The first named was 
a coarse, bold, brutal man, always clashing with his associates 
(he once nearly shot Harrod in a dispute over work). He 
was as revengeful and foolhardy as he was daring, but a nat- 

' Governor James T. Morehead's Address at Boonesborough, in 1840 
(Frankfort, Ky., 1841). 

'Ibid., p. 51. Mrs. Boone, Mrs. Denton, Mrs. McGarrv, Afrs. Hogan; 
all were from the North Carolina backwoods ; their ancestry is shown by 
their names. They settled in Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. 

' Like Logan, he was born in Pennsylvania, of Presbyterian Irish stock. 
He had received a good education. 

* Morehead, p. 52. 

'Shelby's MS. Autobiography, in Durrett's library at Louisville. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF KENTUCKY 227 

ural leader in spite of all. Soon after he came to Kentucky 
his son was slain by Indians while out boiling sugar from the 
maples ; and he mercilessly persecuted all redskins forever after. 
Harrod and Logan were of far higher character, and superior 
to him in every respect. Like so many other backwoodsmen, 
they were tall, spare, athletic men, with dark hair and grave 
faces. They were as fearless as they were tireless, and were 
beloved by their followers. Harrod finally died alone in the 
wilderness, nor was it ever certainly known whether he was 
killed by Indian or white man, or perchance by some hunted 
beast. The old settlers always held up his memory as that 
of a man ever ready to do a good deed, whether it was to run 
to the rescue of some one attacked by Indians, or to hunt 
up the strayed plough-horse of a brother settler less skilful 
as a woodsman ; yet he could hardly read or write. Logan was 
almost as good a woodsman and individual fighter, and in addi- 
tion was far better suited to lead men. He was both just and 
generous. His father had died intestate, so that all of his 
property by law came to Logan, who was the eldest son; but 
the latter at once divided it equally with his brothers and 
sisters. As soon as he came to Kentucky he rose to leadership, 
and remained for many years among the foremost of the 
commonwealth founders. 

All this time there penetrated through the sombre forests 
faint echoes of the strife the men of the seacoast had just 
begun against the British king. The rumors woke to passion- 
ate loyalty the hearts of the pioneers; and a roaming party 
of hunters, when camped on a branch ^ of the Elkhorn, by the 
hut of one of their number, named McConnell, called the spot 
Lexington, in honor of the memory of the Massachusetts 
minutemen, about whose death and victorv they had just 
heard. ^ 

By the end of 1775 the Americans had gained firm foothold 

* These frontiersmen called a stream a "run," "branch," "creek," or 
"fork," but never a "brook," as in the Northeast. 

^ "History of Lexington," G. W. Ranck, Cincinnati, 1872, p. 19. The 
town was not permanently occupied till four years later. 



228 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

in Kentucky. Cabins had been built and clearings made ; there 
were women and children in the wooden forts, cattle grazed 
on the range, and two or three hundred acres of corn had 
been sown and reaped. There were perhaps some three hun- 
dred men in Kentucky, a hardy, resolute, strenuous band. They 
stood shoulder to shoulder in the wilderness, far from all 
help, surrounded by an overwhelming number of foes. Each 
day's work was fraught with danger as they warred with the 
wild forces from which they wrung their living. Around them 
on every side lowered the clouds of the impending death- 
struggle with the savage lords of the neighboring lands. 

These backwoodsmen greatly resembled one another; their 
leaders were but types of the rank and file, and did not differ 
so very widely from them ; yet two men stand out clearly from 
their fellows. Above the throng of wood-choppers, game-hunt- 
ers, and Indian fighters loom the sinewy figures of Daniel 
Boone and George Rogers Clark. 



CHAPTER XI 

IN THE CURRENT OF THE REVOLUTION— THE SOUTHERN 
BACKWOODSMEN OVERWHELM THE CHEROKEES 

1776 

THE great Western drift of our people began almost at 
the moment when they became Americans, and ceased 
to be merely British colonists. They crossed the great 
divide which sundered the springs of the seaboard rivers from 
the sources of the Western waters about the time that Ameri- 
can citizens first publicly acted as American freemen, knit to- 
gether by common ties and with interests no longer akin to 
those of the mother country. The movement which was to 
make the future nation a continental power was begun imme- 
diately after the hitherto separate colonies had taken the first 
step toward solidification. While the communities of the sea- 
coast were yet in a fever-heat from the uprising against 
the stamp tax, the first explorers were toiling painfully to 
Kentucky, and the first settlers were building their palisaded 
hamlets on the banks of the Watauga. The year that saw 
the first Continental Congress saw also the short, grim tragedy 
of Lord Dunmore's war. The early battles of the Revolution 
were fought while Boone's comrades were laying the founda- 
tions of their commonwealth. 

Hitherto the two chains of events had been only remotely 
connected; but in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the struggle between the king and his rebellious 
subjects shook the whole land, and the men of the Western 
border were drawn headlong into the full current of Revolu- 
tionary warfare. From that moment our politics became na- 

229 



230 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tional, and the fate of each portion of our country was 
thenceforth in some sort dependent upon the welfare of every 
other. Each section had its own work to do; the East won 
independence while the West began to conquer the continent. 
Yet the deeds of each were of vital consequence to the other. 
Washington's Continentals gave the West its freedom; and 
took in return for themselves and their children a share of 
the land that had been conquered and held by the scanty bands 
of tall backwoodsmen. 

The backwoodsmen, the men of the up-country, were, as a 
whole, ardent adherents of the patriot or American side. Yet 
there were among them many Loyalists or Tories ; and these 
Tories included in their ranks much the greatest portion of 
the vicious and the disorderly elements. This was the direct 
reverse of what obtained along portions of the seaboard, where 
large numbers of the peaceable, well-to-do people stood loyally 
by the king. In the up-country, however, the Presbyterian 
Irish, with their fellows of Calvinistic stock and faith, formed 
the backbone of the moral and order-loving element; and the 
Presbyterian Irish ^ were almost to a man stanch and furious 
upholders of the Continental Congress. Naturally, the. large 
bands of murderers, horse thieves, and other wild outlaws, 
whom these grim friends of order hunted down with merciless 
severity, were glad to throw in their lot with any party that 
promised revenge upon their foes. But of course there were 
lawless characters on both sides ; in certain localities, where 
the crop of jealousies, always a rank backwoods growth, had 
been unusually large, and had therefore produced long-standing 
and bitter feuds,- the rival families espoused opposite sides 
from sheer vindictive hatred of one another. As a result, the 
struggle in the backwoods between Tories and Whigs, King's- 

' Mr. Phelan, in his "History of Tennessee," deserves especial praise for 
having so clearly understood the part played by the Scotch-Irish. 

' Tlie Campbell MSS. contain allusions to various such feuds and ac- 
counts of the jealousies existing not only between families, but between 
prominent members of tlie same family. 



THE REVOLUTION 231 

men and Congress-men/ did not merely turn upon the ques- 
tions everywhere at stake between the American and British 
parties. It was also in part a fight between the law-abiding 
and the lawless, and in part a slaking of savage personal ani- 
mosities, wherein the borderers glutted their vengeance on one 
another. They exercised without restraint the right of pri- 
vate warfare, long abandoned in more civilized regions. It 
was natural that such a contest should be waged with appalling 
ferocity. 

Nevertheless this very ferocity was not only inevitable, 
but it was in a certain sense proper; or, at least, even if many 
of its manifestations were blamable, the spirit that lay be- 
hind them was right. The backwoodsmen were no sentimen- 
talists ; they were grim, hard, matter-of-fact men, engaged all 
their lives long in an unending struggle with hostile forces, 
both human and natural ; men who in this struggle had acquired 
many unamiable qualities, but who had learned likewise to 
appreciate at their full value the inestimable virtues of courage 
and common sense. The crisis demanded that they should be 
both strong and good; but, above all things, it demanded that 
they should be strong. Weakness would have ruined them. 
It was needful that justice should stand before mercy; and 
they could no longer have held their homes, had they not put 
down their foes, of every kind, with an iron hand. They 
did not have many theories ; but they were too genuinely lib- 
erty-loving not to keenly feel that their freedom was jeopard- 
ized as much by domestic disorder as by foreign aggression. 

The Tories were obnoxious under two heads ; they were the 
allies of a tyrant who lived beyond the sea, and they were 
the friends of anarchy at home. They were felt by the 
frontiersmen to be criminals rather than ordinary foes. They 
included in their ranks the mass of men who had been guilty 
of the two worst frontier crimes — horse-stealing and murder; 
and their own feats were in the eyes of their neighbors in no 
way distinguishable from those of other horse thieves and 
'See Milfort, Smyth, etc., as well as the native writers. 



232 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

murderers. Accordingly, the backwoodsmen soon grew to 
regard Toryism as merely another crime ; and the courts some- 
times executed equally summary justice on Tory, desperado, 
and stock thief, holding each as having forfeited his life.^ 

The backwoodsmen were engaged in a threefold contest. In 
the first place, they were occasionally, but not often, opposed 
to the hired British and German soldiers of a foreign king. 
Next, they were engaged in a fierce civil war with the Tories 
of their own number. Finally, they were pitted against the 
Indians, in the ceaseless border struggle of a rude, vigorous 
civilization to overcome an inevitably hostile savagery. The 
regular British armies, marching to and fro in the course of 
their long campaigns on the seaboard, rarely went far enough 
back to threaten the frontiersmen; the latter had to do chiefly 
with Tories led by British chiefs, and with Indians instigated 
by British agents. 

Soon after the conflict with the revolted colonists became 
one of arms as well as one of opinions, the British began 
to rouse the Indian tribes to take their part. In the Northwest 
they were at first unsuccessful ; the memory of Lord Dun- 
more's war was still fresh in the minds of the tribes beyond 
the Ohio, and they remained for the most part neutral. The 
Shawnees continued even in 1776 to send in to the Americans 
white prisoners collected from among their outlying bands, 
in accordance with the terms of the treaty entered into on the 
Pickaway plains.^ 

But the southwestern Indians were not held in check by 
memories of recent defeat, and they were alarmed by the en- 
croachments of the whites. Although the Cherokees had regu- 
larly ceded to the Watauga settlers their land, they still con- 
tinued jealous of them; and both Creeks and Cherokees were 

* Executions for "treason," murder, and horse-stealing were very com- 
mon. For an instance where the three crimes were treated ahke as de- 
serving the death penaUy the perpetrators being hung, see Calendar of 
"Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 361. 

'"American Archives," 4th Series, vol. VI, p. 541. But parties of young 
braves went on the war-path from time to time. 



THE REVOLUTION ^33 

much irritated at the conduct of some of the lawless Georgian 
frontiersmen.^ The colonial authorities tried to put a stop 
to this lawlessness, and one of the chief offenders was actually 
seized and hung in the presence of two Indians.- This had a 
momentary effect on the Creeks, and induced them for the time 
being to observe a kind of nominal neutrality, though they still 
furnished bodies of warriors to help the British and Chero- 
kees.^ 

The latter, however, who were the nearest neighbors of the 
Americans, promptly took up the tomahawk at the bidding of 
the British. The royal agents among these Southern Indians 
had so far successfully * followed the perfectly cold-blooded 
though perhaps necessary policy of exciting the tribes to war 
with one another, in order that they might leave the whites 
at peace; but now, as they officially reported to the British 
commander. General Gage, they deemed this course no longer 
wise, and, instead of fomenting, they endeavored to allay, the 
strife between the Chickasaws and Creeks, so as to allow the 
latter to turn their full strength against the Georgians.^ At 
the same time every effort was made to induce the Cherokees 
to rise,^ and they were promised gunpowder, blankets, and 
the like ''' although some of the promised stores were seized by 
the Americans while being forwarded to the Indians.^ 

In short, the British were active and successful in rousing 
the war spirit among Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chicka- 
saws, having numerous agents in all these tribes.^ Their suc- 
cess, and the consequent ravages of the Indians, maddened 

^Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 790. ^Ibid., vol. VI, p. 1228. 

' See Milfort, pp. 46, 134, etc. 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. I, p. 1094, for example of fight 
between Choctaws and Creeks. 

''Ibid., vol. IV, p. 317. Letter of Agent John Stuart to General Gage, 
St. Augustine, October 3, 1775. 

" State Department MSS., No. 71, vol. II, p. 189. Letter of David Taitt, 
Deputy Superintendent (of British) in Creek nation. 

' "American Archives," vol. Ill, p. 218, August 21, 1775. 

' Ibid., p. 790, September 25, 1775. 

° State Department MSS., No. 51, vol. II, p. 17 (volume of "Intercepted 
Letters"). Letters of Andrew Rainsford, John Mitchell, and Alexander 
McCullough, to Rt. Hon. Lord George Germain. 



234 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the American frontiersmen upon whom the blow fell, and 
changed their resentment against the British king into a deadly 
and lasting hatred, which their sons and grandsons inherited. 
Indian warfare was of such peculiar atrocity that the employ- 
ment of Indians as allies forbade any further hope of recon- 
ciliation. It is not necessary to accept the American estimate 
of the motives inspiring the act in order to sympathize fully 
with the horror and anger that it aroused among the fron- 
tiersmen. They saw their homes destroyed, their wives out- 
raged, their children captured, their friends butchered and 
tortured wholesale by Indians armed with British weapons, 
bribed by British gold, and obeying the orders of British agents 
and commanders. Their stormy anger was not likely to be 
allayed by the consideration that Congress also had at first 
made some effort to enlist Indians in the patriot forces, nor 
were they apt to bear in mind the fact that the British, instead 
of being abnormally cruel, were in reality less so than our 
former French and Spanish opponents.^ 

Looking back, it is easy to see that the Indians were the 
natural foes of the American people, and therefore the natural 
allies of the British Government. They had constantly to 
fear the advance of the Americans, while from the fur traders, 
Indian agents, and army officers who alone represented Britain, 
they had nothing but coveted treasures of every kind to expect. 
They seemed tools'" forged for the hands of the royal com- 
manders, whose own people lay far beyond the reach of re- 
prisals in kind; and it was perhaps too much to expect that 
in that age such tools should not be used.^ We had less tempta- 
tion to employ them, less means wherewith to pay them, and 

^ No body of British troops in the Revolution bore such a dark stain on 
its laurels as the massacre at Fort William Henry left on the banners of 
Montcalm ; even the French, not to speak of the Spaniards and Mexicans, 
v^'ere to us far more cruel foes than the British, though generally less 
formidable. In fact the British, as conquerors and rulers in America, 
though very disagreeable, have not usually been either needlessly cruel 
nor (relatively speaking) unjust, and compare rather favorably with most 
other European nations. 

' Though it must be remembered that in our own war with Mexico we 
declined the proffered — and valuable — aid of the Comanches. 



THE REVOLUTION 235 

more cause to be hostile to and dread them ; and moreover 
our skirts are not quite clear in the matter, after all, for we 
more than once showed a tendency to bid for their support. 

But, after all is said, the fact remains that we have to deal, 
not with what, under other circumstances, the Americans 
might have done, but with what the British actually did; and 
for this there can be many apologies, but no sufficient excuse. 
When the commissioners to the Southern Indians wrote to 
Lord George Germain, "we have been indefatigable in our en- 
deavors to keep up a constant succession of parties of Indians 
to annoy the rebels," ^ the writers must have well known, 
what the king's ministers should also have made it their busi- 
ness to know, that the war-parties whom they thus boasted 
of continually sending against the settlements directed their 
efforts mainly, indeed almost exclusively, not against bodies 
of armed men, but against the husbandmen as they unsus- 
pectingly tilled the fields, and against the women and children 
who cowered helplessly in the log cabins. All men knew that 
the prisoners who fell into Indian hands, of whatever age or 
sex, often suffered a fate hideous and revolting beyond de- 
scription. Such a letter as that quoted above makes the ad- 
visers of King George the Third directly responsible for the 
manifold and frightful crimes of their red allies. 

It is small wonder that such a contest should have roused 
in the breasts of the frontiersmen not only ruthless and un- 
dying abhorrence of the Indians, but also a bitterly vindictive 
feeling of hostility toward Great Britain; a feeling that was 
all-powerful for a generation afterward, and traces of which 
linger even to the present day. Moreover, the Indian forays, in 
some ways, damaged the Loyalist cause. The savages had re- 
ceived strict instructions not to molest any of the king's 
friends ; - but they were far too intent on plunder and rapine 
to discriminate between Whig and Tory. Accordingly, their 
ravages drove the best Tories, who had at first hailed the 

* State Department MSS. "Intercepted Letters," Pensacola, July 12, 1779. 
'Ibid. 



236 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Indian advance with joy, into the patriot ranks/ making the 
frontier almost soHdIy Whig; save for the refugees, who 
were wiUing to cast in their lot with the savages. 

While the Creeks were halting and considering, and while 
the Choctaws and Chickasaws were being visited by British 
emissaries, the Cherokees flung themselves on the frontier 
folk. They had been short of ammunition; but when the 
British agents - sent them fifty horseloads ^ by a pack-train 
that was driven through the Creek towns, they no longer hesi- 
tated. The agents showed very poor generalship in making 
them rise so early, when there were no British troops in the 
Southern States,^ and when the Americans were consequently 
unhampered and free to deal with the Indians. Had the rising 
been put off until a British army was in Georgia, it might well 
have proved successful. 

The Cherokee villages stood in that cluster of high moun- 
tain chains which mark the ending of the present boundaries 
of Georgia and both Carolinas. These provinces lay east and 
southeast of them. Directly north were the forted villages 
of the Watauga pioneers, in the valley of the upper Tennessee, 
and beyond these again, in the same valley, the Virginian out- 
post settlements. Virginia, North and South Carolina, and 
Georgia were alike threatened by the outbreak, while the 
Watauga people were certain to be the chief sufferers. The 
Cherokees were so near the settlements that their incursions 
were doubly dangerous. On the other hand, there was not 
nearly as much difficulty in dealing them a counter-blow as in 
the case of the Northern Indians, for their towns lay thickly 
together and were comparatively easy of access. Moreover, 
they were not rated such formidable fighters. By comparing 
Lord Dunmore's war in 1774 with this struggle against the 

^ "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 610. 

'Stuart and Cameron; the latter dwelt among them, and excited them 
to war. 

' "American Archives," 5th Series, III, 649. 

*The only British attempt made at that time against the Southern col- 
onies was in too small force, and failed. 



THE REVOLUTION 237 

Cherokees in 1776, it is easy to see the difference between 
a contest against the Northern and one against the Southern 
tribes. In 1776, our Indian foes were more numerous than 
in 1774, for there were over two thousand Cherokee warriors 
— perhaps two thousand five hundred — assisted by a few 
Creeks and Tories; they were closer to the frontier, and so 
their ravages were more serious; but they did not prove such 
redoubtable foes as Cornstalk's warriors, their villages were 
easier reached, and a more telling punishment was inflicted. 

The Cherokees had been showing signs of hostility for some 
time. They had murdered two Virginians the previous year ; ^ 
and word was brought to the settlements, early in the summer 
of '76, that they were undoubtedly preparing for war, as 
they were mending guns, making moccasins, and beating flour 
for the march.- In June, their ravages began.^ The Otari, or 
Overhill Cherokees, had sent runners to the valley towns, ask- 
ing their people to wait until all were ready before marching, 
that the settlements might be struck simultaneously; but some 
of the young braves among the lower towns could not be re- 
strained, and in consequence the outlying settlers of Georgia 
and the Carolinas were the first to be assailed. 

The main attack was made early in July, the warriors rush- 
ing down from their upland fastnesses in fierce and headlong 
haste, the different bands marching north, east, and south- 
east at the same moment. From the Holston to the Tugelou, 
from southwestern Virginia to northwestern Georgia, the 
back-county settlements were instantly wrapped in the sudden 
horror of savage warfare. 

The Watauga people, the most exposed of all, received timely 
warning from a friendly squaw,* to whom the whites ever 
after showed respect and gratitude. They at once began to 
prepare for the stroke; and in all the Western world of woods- 
men there were no men better fitted for such a death-grapple. 

* "American Archives," 4th Series, vol. Ill, p. 11 12. 

'Ibid., 5th Series, vol. I, p. in. 'Ibid., 4th Series, vol. VI, p. 1229, 

■"Her name was Nancy Ward. Campbell MSS., Haywood, etc. 



238 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

They still formed a typical pioneer community ; and their num- 
ber had been swelled from time to time by the arrival of other 
bold and restless spirits. Their westernmost settlement this 
year was in Carter's Valley; where four men had cleared a 
few acres of corn land, and had! hunted buffalo for their 
winter's meat.^ 

As soon as they learned definitely that the Otari warriors, 
some seven hundred in number, were marching against them, 
they took refuge in their wooden forts or stations. Among 
the most important of these were the one at Watauga, in 
which Sevier and Robertson held command, and another known 
as Eaton's Station,- placed just above the forks of the Holston. 
Some six miles from the latter, near the Long Island or Big 
Island of the Holston, lay quite a large tract of level land, 
covered with an open growth of saplings, and known as the 
Island flats. 

The Indians were divided into several bands ; some of their 
number crossed over into Carter's Valley, and after ravaging 
it, passed on up the Clinch. The settlers at once gathered in 
the little stockades ; those who delayed were surprised by the 
savages, and were slain as they fled, or else were captured, 
perhaps to die by torture — men, women, and children alike. 
The cabins were burnt, the grain destroyed, the cattle and 
horses driven off, and the sheep and hogs shot down with 
arrows ; the Indians carried bows and arrows for this express 
purpose, so as to avoid wasting powder and lead. The bolder 
war-parties, in their search for scalps, penetrated into Vir- 
ginia a hundred miles beyond the frontier,^ wasting the coun- 
try with tomahawk and brand up to the Seven-Mile Ford. The 
roads leading to the wooden forts were crowded with settlers, 

* Ramsey, 144. The buffalo were killed (winter of 1775-1776) twelve 
miles northeast of Carter's Valley. 

Mlaywood and his followers erroneously call it TTcaton's; in the Camp- 
bell MSS., as well as in the "American Archives," 5th Series, I, p. 464, 
it is called Eaton's or Amos Eaton's. This is contemporary authority. 
Other forts were Evan Shelby's, John Shelby's, Campbell's, the Wommack 
fort, etc. 

" "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 973. 



THE REVOLUTION 239 

who, in their mortal need of hurry, had barely time to snatch 
up a few of the household goods, and, if especially lucky, to 
mount the women and children on horses; as usual in such 
a flight, there occurred many deeds of cowardly selfishness, 
offset by many feats of courage and self-sacrifice. Once in 
the fort, the backwoodsmen often banded into parties, and 
sallied out to fall on the Indians. Sometimes these parties 
were worsted; at other times they overcame their foes either 
by ambush or in fair fight. One such party from the Wolf 
Hills fort killed eleven Indian warriors; and on their return 
they hung the scalps of their slain foes, as trophies of triumph, 
from a pole over the fort gate.^ They were Bible-readers in 
this fort, and they had their Presbyterian minister with them, 
having organized a special party to bring in the books he had 
left in his cabin; they joined in prayer and thanksgiving for 
their successes; but this did not hinder them from scalping 
the men they killed. They were too well read in the merciless 
wars of the Chosen People to feel the need of sparing the 
fallen; indeed, they would have been most foolish had they 
done so; for they were battling with a heathen enemy more 
ruthless and terrible than ever was Canaanite or Philistine. 

The two largest of the invading Indian bands ^ moved, one 
by way of the mountains, to fall on the Watauga fort and its 
neighbors, and the other, led by the great war-chief, Dragging 
Canoe, to lay waste the country guarded by Eaton's Station. 

The white scouts — trained woodsmen, whose lives had been 
spent in the chase and in forest warfare — kept the commanders 
or head men of the forts well informed of the Indian ad- 
vance. As soon as it was known what part was really threat- 
ened, runners were sent to the settlements near by, calling 
on the riflemen to gather at Eaton's Station ; whither they ac- 

^ "American Pioneers," I, 534. Letter of Benjamin Sharp, who was in 
the fort at the time as a boy fourteen years old. 

' Many writers speak as if all the Indians were in these two bands, 
which was not so. It is impossible to give their numbers exactly; prob- 
ably each contained from 150 to 300 warriors. 



240 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

cordingly came in small bodies, under their respective militia 
captains.^ 

No man was really in command; the senior captain exer- 
cised a vague kind of right of advice over the others, and 
the latter in turn got from their men such obedience as their 
own personal influence was able to procure. But the levy, if 
disorderly, was composed of excellent marksmen and woods- 
men, sinewy, hardy, full of fight, and accustomed to act to- 
gether. A council was held, and it was decided not to stay 
cooped up in the fort, like turkeys in a pen, while the Indians 
ravaged the fields and burnt the homesteads, but to march out 
at once and break the shock by a counter-stroke. 

Accordingly, on the morning of the 20th of July, they filed 
out of the fort, one hundred and seventy strong, and bent 
their steps toward the Island Flats. Well versed in woodland 
warfare, the frontier riflemen marched as well as fought on 
a system of their own, much more effective for this purpose 
than the discipline of European regulars. The men of this 
little levy walked strung out in Indian file, in two parallel lines,^ 
with scouts in front, and flankers on each side. Marching 
thus they could not be surprised, and were ready at any mo- 
ment to do battle with the Indians, in open order and taking 
shelter behind the trees ; while regulars, crowded together, were 
helpless before the savages whom the forest screened from 
view, and who esteemed it an easy task to overcome any num- 
ber of foes if gathered in a huddle.^ 

When near the Flats the whites, walking silently with moc- 
casined feet, came suddenly on a party of twenty Indians, who. 
on being attacked, fled in the utmost haste, leaving behind 

^ James Thompson, James Shelby, William Buchanan, John Campbell, 
William Cocke, and Thomas Madison. See their letter of August 2, 1776, 
"American Archives," 5th Series, I, 464. Haywood, relyin,^ on tradition, 
says five companies gathered; he is invaluable as an authority, but it must 
be kept in mind that he often relies on traditional statement. 

''The rei)ort of the six captains says "two divisions"; from Haywood 
we learn that the two divisions were two lines, evidently marching side 
by side, there being a right line and a left line. 

' See James Smith, passim. 



THE REVOLUTION 241 

ten of their bundles — for the Southern warriors carried with 
them, when on the warpath, small bundles containing their 
few necessaries. 

After this trifling success a council was held, and, as the 
day was drawing to a close, it was decided to return to the 
fort. Some of the men were dissatisfied with the decision, 
and there followed an incident as characteristic in its way as 
was the bravery with which the battle was subsequently fought. 
The discontented soldiers expressed their feelings freely, com.- 
menting especially upon the supposed lack of courage on the 
part of one of the captains. The latter, after brooding over 
the matter until the men had begun to march off the ground 
toward home, suddenly halted the line in which he was walking, 
and proceeded to harangue the troops in defense of his own 
reputation. Apparently no one interfered to prevent this re- 
markable piece of military self-justification; the soldiers were 
evidently accustomed openly to criticise the conduct of their 
commanders, while the latter responded in any manner they 
saw fit. As soon as the address was over, and the lines once 
more straightened out, the march was renewed in the original 
order ; and immediately afterward the scouts brought news that 
a considerable body of Indians, misled by their retreat, was 
running rapidly up to assail their rear.^ 

The right file was promptly wheeled to the right and the 
left to the left, forming a line of battle a quarter of a mile 
long, the men taking advantage of the cover when possible. 
There was at first some confusion and a momentary panic, 
which was instantly quelled, the officers and many of the men 
joining to encourage and rally the few whom the suddenness 
of the attack rendered faint-hearted. The Otari warriors, in- 
stead of showing the usual Indian caution, came running on 
at headlong speed, believing that the whites were fleeing in 

* Among the later Campbell MSS. are a number of copies of papers con- 
taining traditional accounts of this battle. They are mostly very incorrect, 
both as to the numbers and losses of the Indians and whites, and as to the 
battle itself very little help can be derived from them. 



'""" """■"I"l"""""""""I-< "»'■""— —»——" 



242 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

terror ; while still some three hundred yards off ^ they raised 
the war-whoop and charged without halting, the foremost 
chiefs hallooing out that the white men were running, and 
to come on and scalp them. They were led by Dragging 
Canoe himself, and were formed very curiously, their centre 
being cone-shaped, while their wings were curved outward; 
apparently they believed the white line to be wavering, and 
hoped to break through its middle at the same time that they 
outflanked it, trusting to a single furious onset instead of 
to their usual tactics.^ The result showed their folly. The 
frontiersmen on the right and left scattered out still farther, 
so that their line could not be outflanked; and waiting coolly 
till the Otari were close up, the whites fired into them. The 
long rifles cracked like four-horse whips; they were held in 
skilful hands, many of the assailants fell, and the rush was 
checked at once. A short fight at close quarters ensued here 
and there along the line. Dragging Canoe was struck down 
and severely wounded, and then the Indians fled in the utmost 
confusion, every man for himself. Yet they carried off their 
wounded and perhaps some of their dead. The whites took 
thirteen scalps, and of their own number but four were seri- 
ously hurt ; they also took many guns and much plunder. 

In this battle of the Island Flats ^ the whites were slightly 
superior "* in number to their foes ; and they won without diffi- 

' Campbell MSS. _ _ ""Ibid. 

' Tennessee historians sometimes call it the battle of Long Island ; which 
confuses it with Washington's defeat of about the same date. 

■* The captains' report says the Indians were "not inferior" in numbers ; 
they probably put them at a maximum. Haywood and all later writers 
greatly exaggerate the Indian numbers ; as also their losses, which are 
commonly placed at "over 40," "26 being left dead on the ground." In 
reality only thirteen were so left ; but in the various skirmishes on the 
Watauga about this time, from the middle of July to the middle of 
August, the backwoodsmen took in all twenty-six scalps and one prisoner 
("American Archives," 5th Series, I, 973). This is probably the origin of 
the "26 dead" story ; the "over 40" being merely a flourish. Ramsey gives 
a story about Isaac Shelby rallying the whites to victory, and later writers, 
of course, follow and embellish this; but Shelby's MS. Autobiography (see 
copy in Colonel Durrett's library at Louisville) not only makes no men- 
tion of the battle, but states that Shelby was at this time in Kentucky ; 
he came back in August or September, and so was hundreds of miles from 



THE REVOLUTION 245 

culty, inflicting a far heavier loss than they received, 'cessful 
respect it differs markedly from most other Indian figi 
the same time; and many of its particulars render it irder 
worthy. Moreover, it had a vfery good effect, cheering hat 
frontiersmen greatly, and enabling them to make head agair^y 
the discouraged Indians. t 

On the same day the Watauga fort ^ was attacked by a large 
force at sunrise. It was crowded with women and children,- 
but contained only forty or fifty men. The latter, however, 
were not only resolute and well armed, but were also on the 
alert to guard against surprise; the Indians were discovered 
as they advanced in the gray light, and were at once beaten 
back with loss from the loopholed stockade. Robertson com- 
manded in the fort, Sevier acting as his lieutenant. Of course, 
the only hope of assistance was from Virginia, North Carolina 
being separated from the Watauga people by great mountain 
chains ; and Sevier had already notified the officers of Fincastle 
that the Indians were advancing. His letter was of laconic 
brevity, and contained no demand for help; it was merely 
a warning that the Indians were undoubtedly about to start, 
and that "they intended to drive the country up to New River 
before they returned" — so that it behooved the Fincastle men 
to look to their own hearthsides. Sevier was a very fearless, 

the place when the battle occurred. Ramsey gives a number of anecdotes 
of ferocious personal encounters that took place during the battle. Some 
of them are of very doubtful value — for instance, that of the man who 
killed six of the most daring Indians himself (the total 'number killed 
being only thirteen), and the account of the Indians all retreating when 
they saw another of their champions vanquished. The climax of absurdity 
is reached by a recent writer, Mr. Kirke, who, after embodying in his 
account all the errors of his predecessors and adding several others on 
his own responsibility, winds up by stating that "two hundred and ten 
men under Sevier and [Isaac] Shelby . . . beat back . . . fifteen thousand 
Indians." These numbers can only be reached by comparing an exagger- 
ated estimate of all the Cherokees, men, women, and children, with the 
white men encountered by a very small proportion of the red warriors in 
the first two skirmishes. Moreover, as already shown, Shelby was nowhere 
near the scene of conflict, and Sevier was acting as Robertson's subaltern. 

' Another fort, called Fort Lee, had been previously held by Sevier, but 
had been abandoned. See Phelan, p. 42. 

* "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 973; SCO women and children. 



244 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

self-reliant man, and doubtless felt confident that the settlers 
themselves could beat back their assailants. His forecast 
proved correct; for the Indians, after maintaining an irregular 
siege of the fort for some three weeks, retired, almost at 
the moment that parties of frontiersmen came to the rescue 
from some of the neighboring forts. -^ 

While the foe was still lurking about the fort the people 
within were forced to subsist solely on parched corn ; and from 
time to time some of them became so irritated by the irksome 
monotony of their confinement, that they ventured out heedless 
of the danger. Three or four of them were killed by the In- 
dians, and one boy was carried off to one of their towns, where 
he was burnt at the stake; while a woman, who was also 
captured at this time, was only saved from a like fate by the 
exertions of the same Cherokee squaw already mentioned as 
warning the settlers. Tradition relates that Sevier, now a 
young widower, fell in love with the woman he soon after- 
ward married during the siege. Her name was Kate Sherrill. 
She was a tall girl, brown-haired, comely, lithe, and supple 
"as a hickory sapling." One day while without the fort she 
was almost surprised by some Indians. Running like a deer, 
she reached the stockade, sprang up so as to catch the top 
with her hands, and drawing herself over was caught in 
Sevier's arms on the other side; through a loophole he had 
already shot the headmost of her pursuers. 

Soon afte'r the baffled Otari retreated from Robertson's fort 
the other war-parties likewise left the settlements. The Wa- 
tauga men, together with the immediately adjoining Virginian 
frontiersmen, had beaten back their foes unaided, save for 
some powder and lead they had received from the older set- 
tlements; and, moreover, had inflicted more loss than they suf- 

* Campbell MSS. Haywood says that the first help came from Evan 
Shelby ; Colonel Russell, at Eaton's Station, proving dilatory. In the 
Campbell AISS. are some late letters written by sons of the Captain 
Campbell who took part in the Island Flats fight, denying this statement. 



"- ■ 



THE REVOLUTION 245 

fered.^ They had made an exceedingly vigorous and successful 
fight. 

The outlying settlements scattered along the western border 
of the Carolinas and Georgia had been attacked somewhat 
earlier; the Cherokees from the lower towns, accompanied by 
some Creeks and Tories, beginning their ravages in the last 
days of June.- A small party of Georgians had, just previ- 
ously, made a sudden march into the Cherokee country. They 
were trying to capture the British agent Cameron, who, being 
married to an Indian wife, dwelt in her town, and owned 
many negroes, horses, and cattle. The Cherokees, who had 
agreed not to interfere, broke faith and surprised the party, 
killing some and capturing others, who were tortured to 
death. ^ 

The frontiers were soon in a state of wild panic; for the 
Cherokee inroad was marked by the usual features. Cattle 
were driven off, houses burned, plantations laid waste, while 
the women and children were massacred indiscriminately with 
the men.* The people fled from their homes and crowded into 
the stockade forts ; they were greatly hampered by the scarcity 
of guns and ammunition, as much had been given to the 
troops called down to the coast by the war with Britain. All 
the Southern colonies were maddened by the outbreak, and pre- 
pared for immediate revenge, knowing that if they were quick 
they would have time to give the Cherokees a good drubbing 
before the British could interfere.^ The plan was that they 
should act together, the Virginians invading the Overhill coun- 
try at the same time that the forces from North and South 
Carolina and Georgia destroyed the valley and lower towns. 
Thus the Cherokees would be crushed with little danger. It 

_ ^ "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 973. Of the Watauga settlers 
eighteen men, two women, and several children had been killed ; two or 
three were taken captive. Of the Indians twenty-six were scalped ; doubt- 
less several others were slain. Of course, these figures only apply to the 
Watauga neighborhood. ''Ibid., p. 611. 

' "History of Georgia," Hugh McCall, Savannah, 1816, p. 76. 

* "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 610. 

'Ibid., 4th Series, VI, 1228. 



mitfUiiiiitinmiitiiiiHiiifr"'"— "■"" 



246 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

proved impossible, however, to get the attacks made quite 
simultaneously. 

The back districts of North Carolina suffered heavily at the 
outset; however, the inhabitants showed that they were able 
to take care of themselves. The Cherokees came down the 
Catawba, murdering many people ; but most of the whites took 
refuge in the little forts, where they easily withstood the In- 
dian assaults. General Griffith Rutherford raised a frontier 
levy and soon relieved the besieged stations. He sent word 
to the provincial authorities that if they could only get powder 
and lead, the men of the Salisbury district were alone quite 
capable of beating off the Indians, but that if it was intended 
to invade the Cherokee country he must also have help from 
the Hillsborough men.^ He was promised assistance, and was 
told to prepare a force to act on the offensive with the Vir- 
ginians and South Carolinians. 

Before he could get ready the first counterblow had been 
struck by Georgia and South Carolina. Georgia was the 
weakest of all the colonies, and the part it played in this war 
was but trifling. It was threatened by British cruisers along 
the coast, and by the Tories of Florida ; and there was constant 
danger of an uprising of the black slaves, who outnumbered 
the whites. The vast herds of cattle and great rice planta- 
tions of the South offered a tempting bait to every foe. Tories 
were numerous in the population, while there were incessant 
bickerings with the Creeks, frequently resulting in small local 
wars, brought on as often by the faithlessness aiid brutality 
of the white borderers as by the treachery and cruelty of the 
red. Indeed, the Indians were only kept quiet by presents, it 
being an unhappy feature of the frontier troubles that while 
lawless whites could not be prevented from encroaching on 
the Indian lands, the Indians in turn could only be kept at 
peace with the law-abiding by being bribed.- 

* "American Archives," 5th Series, I, 613. 

'Ibid., 5th Scries, I, 7, and III, 649. The Georgia frontiersmen seem to 
have been peculiarly brutal in their conduct to the Creeks; but the latter 
were themselves very little, if at all, better. 



I^BBBBBBBBOB 



THE REVOLUTION 247 

Only a small number of warriors invaded Georgia. Never- 
theless they greatly harassed the settlers, capturing several 
families and fighting two or three skirmishes with varying 
results.^ By the middle of July, Colonel Samuel Jack - took 
the field with a force of two hundred rangers, all young men, 
the old and infirm being left to guard the forts. The Indians 
fled as soon as he had embodied his troops, and toward the 
end of the month he marched against one or two of their 
small lower towns, which he burned, destroying the grain and 
driving off the cattle. No resistance was offered, and he did 
not lose a man. 

The heaviest blow fell on South Carolina, where the Chero- 
kees were led by Cameron himself, accompanied by most of 
his Tories. Some of his warriors came from the lower towns 
that lay along the Tugelou and Keowee, but most were from 
the middle towns, in the neighborhood of the Tellico, and 
from the valley towns that lay well to the westward of these, 
among the mountains, along the branches of the Hiawassee 
and Chattahoochee rivers. Falling furiously on the scattered 
settlers, they killed them or drove them into the wooden forts, 
ravaging, burning, and murdering as elsewhere, and sparing 
neither age nor sex. Colonel Andrew Williamson was in com- 
mand of the western districts, and he at once began to gather 
together a force, taking his station at Pickens's fort, with 
forty men, on July 3d.^ It was with the utmost difficulty that 
he could get troops, guns, or ammunition ; but his strenuous 
and unceasing efforts were successful, and his force increased 
day by day. It is worth noting that these lowland troops 
were for the most part armed with smooth-bores, unlike the 
rifle-bearing mountaineers. As soon as he could muster a 
couple of hundred men,^ he left the fort and advanced toward 

^ AlcCall. Five families captured ; in three skirmishes eight whites were 
killed and six Indian scalps taken. 

^ fbid. The Tennessee historians erroneously assign the command to 
Colonel McBury. 

^"View of South Carolina," John Drayton, Charleston, 1802, p. 231. A 
very good book. 

* More exactly, 222, on the 8th of July. 



umamaammMamimaMama 



248 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the Indians, making continual halts/ so as to allow the numer- 
ous volunteers that were flocking to his standard to reach him. 
At the same time the Americans were much encouraged by 
the repulse of an assault made just before daylight on one of 
the forts.- The attacking party was some two hundred strong, 
half of them being white men, naked and painted like the In- 
dians; but after dark, on the evening before the attack, a band 
of one hundred and fifty American militia, on their way to 
join Williamson, entered the fort. The assault was made be- 
fore dawn; it was promptly repulsed, and at daybreak the 
enemy fled, having suffered some loss ; thirteen of the Tories 
were captured, but the more nimble Indians escaped. 

By the end of July, Williamson had gathered over eleven 
hundred militia^ (including two small rifle companies), and 
advanced against the Indian towns, sending his spies and scouts 
before him. On the last day of the month he made a rapid 
night march, with three hundred and fifty horsemen, to sur- 
prise Cameron, who lay with a party of Tories and Indians, 
encamped at Oconoree Creek, beyond the Cherokee town of 
Eseneka, which commanded the ford of the River Keowee. 
The cabins and fenced gardens of the town lay on both sides 
of the river. Williamson had been told by his prisoners that 
the hither bank was deserted, and advanced heedlessly, without 
scouts or flankers. In consequence, he fell into an ambush, for 
when he reached the first houses, hidden Indians suddenly 
fired on him from front and flank. Many horses, including 
that of the commander, were shot down, and the startled 
troops began a disorderly retreat, firing at random. Colonel 
Hammond rallied about twenty of the coolest, and ordering 
them to reserve their fire, he charged the fence from behind 
which the heaviest hostile fire came. When up to it they shot into 
the dark figures crouching behind it, and jumping over charged 
home. The Indians immediately fled, leaving one dead and 

^ E.g., at Hogskin Creek and Barker's Creek. 
' Lyndley's fort on Rayborn Creek. 

' Eleven hundred and fifty-one, of whom one hundred and thirty were 
riflemen. He was camped at Twenty-three Mile Creek. 



RB 



THE REVOLUTION 249 

three wounded in the hands of the whites. The action was 
over; but the by-no-means-reassured victors had lost five men 
mortally and thirteen severely wounded, and were still rather 
nervous. At daybreak, Williamson destroyed the houses near 
by, and started to cross the ford. But his men, in true militia 
style, had become sulky and mutinous, and refused to cross, 
until Colonel Hammond swore he would go alone, and plunged 
into the river, followed by three volunteers, whereupon the 
whole army crowded after. The revulsion in their feelings 
was instantaneous ; once across they seemed to have left all 
fear as well as all prudence behind. On the hither side there 
had been no getting them to advance ; on the farther there was 
no keeping them together, and they scattered everywhere. 
Luckily the Indians were too few to retaliate ; and, besides, the 
Cherokees were not good marksmen, using so little powder in 
their guns that they made very ineffective weapons. After all 
the houses had been burned, and some six thousand bushels 
of corn, besides peas and beans, destroyed, Williamson re- 
turned to his camp. Next day he renewed his advance, and 
sent out detachments against all the other lower towns, utterly 
destroying every one by the middle of August, although not 
without one or two smart skirmishes. -"^ His troops were very 
much elated, and only the lack of provisions prevented his 
marching against the middle towns. As it was, he retired to 
refit, leaving a garrison of six hundred men at Eseneka, which 
he christened Fort Rutledge. This ended the first stage of 
the retaliatory campaign, undertaken by the whites in revenge 
for the outbreak. The South Carolinians, assisted slightly by 
a small independent command of Georgians, who acted sepa- 
rately, had destroyed the lower Cherokee towns, at the same 
time that the Watauga people repulsed the attack of the Over- 
hill warriors. 

The second and most important movement was to be made 

*At Tomassee, where he put to flight a body of two or three hundred 
warriors, he lost eight killed and fifteen wounded ; and at Tugelou, four 
wounded. Besides these two towns, he also destroyed Soconee, Keowee, 
Ostatay, Chehokee, Eustustie, Sugaw Town, and Brass Town. 



250 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

by South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia jointly, each 
sending a column of two thousand men,^ the two former 
against the middle and valley, the latter against the Overhill 
towns. If the columns acted together the Cherokees would be 
overwhelmed by a force three times the number of all their 
warriors. The plan succeeded well, although the Virginia 
division was delayed, so that its action, though no less effective, 
was much later than that of the others, and though the latter 
likewise failed to act in perfect unison. 

Rutherford and his North Carolinians were the first to take 
the field.- He had an army of two thousand gunmen, besides 
pack-horsemen and men to tend the drove of bullocks, together 
with a few Catawba Indians — a total of twenty-four hundred.^ 
On September ist he left the head of the Catawba,* and the 
route he followed was long known by the name of Ruther- 
ford's trace. There was not a tent in his army, and but very 
few blankets ; the pack-horses carried the flour, while the beef 
was driven along on the hoof. Officers and men alike wore 
homespun hunting-shirts trimmed with colored cotton; the 
cloth was made from hemp, tow, and wild-nettle bark. 

He passed over the Blue Ridge at Swannanoa Gap, crossed 
the French Broad at the Warrior's Ford, and then went 
through the mountains ^ to the middle towns, a detachment of 
a thousand men making a forced march in advance. This de- 
tachment was fired at by a small band of Indians from an 
ambush, and one man was wounded in the foot ; but no further 

*A11 militia, of course, with only the training they had received on the 
rare muster days ; but a warlike set, utterly unlike ordinary militia, and 
for woodland work against savages in many respects much superior to 
European regulars. This campaign against the Cherokees was infinitely 
more successful than that waged in 1760 against the same foe by armies 
of grenadiers and highlanders. 

^That is, after the return of the South Carolinians from their destruc- 
tion of the lower towns. 

'"Historical Sketches of North Carolina," John H. Wheeler, Philadel- 
phia, 1851, p. 383. 

■"'American Archives," 5th Series, vol. II, p. 1235. 

" Up Hominy Creek, across the Pigeon, up Richland Creek, across Tuck- 
aseigee River, over Cowee Mount. 



THE REVOLUTION 251 

resistance was made, the towns being abandoned.-^ The main 
body coming up, parties of troops were sent out in every di- 
rection, and all of the middle towns were destroyed. Ruther- 
ford had expected to meet Williamson at this place, but the 
latter did not appear, and so the North Carolina commander 
determined to proceed alone against the valley towns along the 
Hiawassee. Taking with him only nine hundred picked men, 
he attempted to cross the rugged mountain chains which sepa- 
rated him from his destination; but he had no guide, and 
missed the regular pass — a fortunate thing for him, as it after- 
ward turned out, for he thus escaped falling into an ambush 
of five hundred Cherokees who were encamped along it.^ 
After in vain trying to penetrate the tangle of gloomy defiles 
and wooded peaks, he returned to the middle towns at Canucca 
on September i8th. Here he met Williamson, who had just 
arrived, having been delayed so that he could not leave Fort 
Rutledge until the I3th.^ The South Carolinians, two thou- 
sand strong, had crossed the Blue Ridge near the sources of 
the Little Tennessee. 

While Rutherford rested,^ Williamson, on the 19th, pushed 
on through Noewee pass, and fell into the ambush which had 
been laid for the former. The pass was a narrow, open valley, 
walled in by steep and lofty mountains. The Indians waited 
until the troops were struggling up to the outlet, and then 
assailed them with a close and deadly fire. The surprised sol- 
diers recoiled and fell into confusion; and they were for the 
second time saved from disaster by the gallantry of Colonel 
Hammond, who with voice and action rallied them, endeavor- 
ing to keep them firm while a detachment was sent to clamber 
up the rocks and outflank the Indians. At the same time Lieu- 

* "American Archives," 5th Series, II, p. 1235. "Ibid. 

'Drayton. There was a good deal of jealousy between the two armies, 
and their reports conflict on some points. 

■* There is some conflict in the accounts of the destruction of the valley 
towns ; after carefully comparing the accounts in the "American Archives," 
Drayton, White, Ramsey, etc., I believe that the above is substantially 
accurate. However, it is impossible to reconcile all of the accounts of the 
relative order of Rutherford's and Williamson's marches. 



252 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tenant Hampton got twenty men together, out of the rout, and 
ran forward, calHng out : "Loaded guns advance, empty guns 
fall down and load." Being joined by some thirty men more 
he pushed desperately upward. The Indians fled from the 
shock; and the army thus owed its safety solely to two gallant 
officers. Of the whites seventeen were killed and twenty-nine 
wounded ; ^ they took fourteen scalps.^ 

Although the distance was but twenty-odd miles, it took 
Williamson five days of incredible toil before he reached the 
valley towns. The troops showed the utmost patience, clearing 
a path for the pack-train along the sheer mountainsides and 
through the dense, untrodden forests in the valleys. The trail 
often wound along cliffs where a single misstep of a pack- 
animal resulted in its being dashed to pieces. But the work, 
though fatiguing, was healthy; it was noticed that during the 
whole expedition not a man was laid up for any length of 
time by sickness. 

Rutherford joined Williamson immediately afterward, and 
together they utterly laid waste the valley towns ; and then, in 
the last week of September, started homeward. All the Chero- 
kee settlements west of the Appalachians had been destroyed 
from the face of the earth, neither crops nor cattle being left, 
and most of the inhabitants were obliged to take refuge with 
the Creeks. 

Rutherford reached home in safety, never having experi- 
enced any real resistance ; he had lost but three men in all. He 
had killed twelve Indians, and had captured nine more, besides 
seven whites and four negroes. He had also taken piles of 
deerskins, a hundredweight of gunpowder, and twenty-five 
hundred pounds of lead; and, moreover, had wasted and de- 
stroyed to this heart's content.^ 

Williamson, too, reached home without suffering further 
damage, entering Fort Rutledge on October 7th. In his two 

^ Drayton. The "American Archives" say only twelve killed and twenty 
wounded. In another skirmish at Cheowec three South Carolinians were 
killed. 

^"American Archives," 5th Series, II, p. 1235. * Ibid. 



THE REVOLUTION 253 

expeditions he had had ninety-four men killed and wounded, 
but he had done much more harm than any one else to the 
Indians. It was said the South Carolinians had taken seventy- 
five scalps ; ^ at any rate, the South Carolina legislature had 
ojffered a reward of seventy-five pounds for every warrior's 
scalp, as well as one hundred pounds for every Indian and 
eighty pounds for every Tory or negro taken prisoner.- But 
the troops were forbidden to sell their prisoners as slaves — not 
a needless injunction, as is shown by the fact that when it 
was issued there had already been at least one case in William- 
son's own army where a captured Indian was sold into bondage. 
The Virginia troops had meanwhile been slowly gathering 
at the Great Island of the Holston, under Colonel William 
Christian, preparatory to assaulting the Overhill Cherokees. 
While they were assembling, the Indians threatened them from 
time to time; once a small party of braves crossed the river 
and killed a soldier near the main post of the army, and also 
killed a settler; a day or two later another war-party slipped 
by toward the settlements, but on being pursued by a detach- 
ment of militia faced about and returned to their town.^ On 
the 1st of October the army started, two thousand strong,^ in- 
cluding some troops from North Carolina, and all the gunmen 
who could be spared from the little stockaded hamlets scattered 
along the Watauga, the Holston, and the Clinch. Except a 
small force of horse-riflemen, the men were on foot, each with 
tomahawk, scalping-knife, and long, grooved flint-lock ; all were 
healthy, well equipped, and in fine spirits, driving their pack- 
horses and bullocks with them. Characteristically enough, a 
Presbyterian clergyman, following his backwoods flock, went 
along with this expedition as chaplain. The army moved very 
cautiously, the night encampments being made behind breast- 

^ Ibid., p. 990. Drayton puts the total Cherokee loss at two hundred. 

' Ibid., vol III, p. 33- 

^ These two events took place on September 26th and 29th ; "American 
Archives," Sth Series, vol. II, p. 540. Ramsey is thus wrong in saying 
no white was killed on this expedition. 

' McAfee MSS. One of the McAfees went along and preserved a rough 
diary of dates. 



254 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

works of felled timbers. There was therefore no chance for 
a surprise; and their great inferiority in number made it hope- 
less for the Cherokees to try a fair fight. In their despair they 
asked help from the Creeks; but the latter replied that they 
had plucked the thorn of warfare from their (the Creeks') 
foot, and were welcome to keep it.^ 

The Virginians came steadily on - until they reached the 
Big Island of the French Broad.^ Here the Cherokees had 
gathered their warriors, and they sent a Tory trader across with 
a flag of truce. Christian, well knowing that the Virginians 
greatly outnumbered the Indians, let the man go through his 
camp at will,"* and sent him back with word that the Cherokee 
towns were doomed, for that he would surely march to them 
and destroy them. That night he left half of his men in camp, 
lying on their arms by the watch-fires, while with the others 
he forded the river below and came round to surprise the In- 
dian encampment from behind ; but he found that the Indians 
had fled, for their hearts had become as water, nor did they 
venture at any time, during this expedition, to molest the white 
forces. Following them up, Christian reached the towns early 
in November,^ and remained two weeks, sending out parties to 
burn the cabins and destroy the stores of corn and potatoes. 
The Indians ^ sent in a flag to treat for peace, surrendering 
the horses and prisoners they had taken, and agreeing to fix 
a boundary and give up to the settlers the land they already 
had, as well as som.e additional territory. Christian made peace 
on these terms and ceased his ravages, but he excepted the 
town of Tuskega, whose people had burned alive the boy taken 
captive at Watauga. This town he reduced to ashes. 

Nor would the chief Dragging Canoe accept peace at all ; but 

* "History of Virginia," John Burke (continued by L. H. Girardin), 
Petersburg, 1816, p. 176. 

^ After camping a few days at Double Springs, the headwaters of Lick 
Creek, to let all the Watauga men come up. 

^ They sent spies in advance. The trail led through forests and marshy 
canehrakcs ; across Nolichucky, up Long Creek and down Dunplin Creek 
to the French Broad. — Haywood and Ramsey. 

HlcAfee MSS. " November 5th.— /6Jrf. ' November 8th.— /fezd. 



THE REVOLUTION 255 

gathering round him the fiercest and most unruly of the young 
men, he left the rest of the tribe and retired to the Chickamauga 
fastnesses. 

When the preliminary truce had been made, Christian 
marched his forces homeward, and disbanded them a fortnight 
before Christmas, leaving a garrison at Holston, Great Island. 
During the ensuing spring and summer peace treaties were defi- 
nitely concluded between the Upper Cherokees and Virginia 
and North Carolina at the Great Island of the Holston,^ and 
between the Lower Cherokees and South Carolina and Georgia 
at De Witt's Corners. The Cherokees gave up some of their 
lands ; of the four seacoast provinces South Carolina gained 
most, as was proper, for she had done and suffered most.^ 

The Watauga people and the Westerners generally were the 
real gainers by the war. Had the Watauga settlements been 
destroyed, they would no longer have covered the Wilderness 
Road to Kentucky; and so Kentucky must perforce have been 
abandoned. But the followers of Robertson and Sevier stood 
stoutly for their homes ; not one of them fled over the moun- 
tains. The Cherokees had been so roughly handled that for 
several years they did not again go to war as a body; and 
this not only gave the settlers a breathing time, but also en- 
abled them to make themselves so strong that when the struggle 
was renewed they could easily hold their own. The war was 
thus another and important link in the chain of events by 
which the West was won ; and had any link in the chain snapped 
during these early years, the peace of 1783 would probably have 
seen the trans- Alleghany country in the hands of a non- Ameri- 
can power. 

*The boundary then established between the Cherokees and Watauga 
people was known as Brown's Line. 

*As a very rough guess, after a careful examination of all the authori- 
ties, it may be said that in this war somewhat less than two hundred 
Indians were slain, all warriors. The loss of the whites in war was prob- 
ably no greater; but it included about as many more women and children. 
So that, perhaps, two or three times as many whites as Indians were killed, 
counting in every one. 



CHAPTER XII 
GROWTH AND CIVIL ORGANIZATION OF KENTUCKY 

1776 

BY the end of 1775 Kentucky had been occupied by those 
who were permanently to hold it. Stout-hearted men, 
able to keep what they had grasped, moved in, and took 
with them their wives and children. There was also, of course, 
a large shifting element, composing, indeed, the bulk of the 
population : hunters who came out for the season ; "cabin- 
ners," or men who merely came out to build a cabin and par- 
tially clear a spot of ground, so as to gain a right to it under 
the law; surveyors, and those adventurers always to be found 
in a new country, who are too restless, or too timid, or too 
irresolute to remain. 

The men with families and the young men who intended 
to make permanent homes formed the heart of the community, 
the only part worth taking into account. There was a steady 
though thin stream of such immigrants, and they rapidly 
built up around them a life not very unlike that which they 
had left behind with their old homes. Even in 1776 there was 
marrying and giving in marriage, and children were born in 
Kentucky. The newcomers had to settle in forts, where the 
young men and maidens had many chances for courtship. They 
married early, and were as fruitful as they were hardy. ^ Most 
of these marriages were civil contracts, but some may have 
been solemnized by clergymen, for the commonwealth re- 
ceived from the outset occasional visits from ministers, 

*Imlay, p. 55, estimated that from natural increase the population of 
Kentucky doubled every fifteen years — probably an exaggeration. 

256 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 257 

These ministers belonged to different denominations, but all 
were sure of a hearing. The backwoodsmen were forced by 
their surroundings to exercise a grudging charity toward the 
various forms of religious belief entertained among them- 
selves — though they hated and despised French and Spanish 
Catholics. When off in the wilderness they were obliged to 
take a man for what he did, not for what he thought. Of 
course there were instances to the contrary, and there is an 
amusing and authentic story of two hunters, living alone and 
far from any settlement, who quarrelled because one was a 
Catholic and the other a Protestant. The seceder took up his 
abode in a hollow tree within speaking distance of his com- 
panion's cabin. Every day on arising they bade each other 
good morning; but not another word passed between them 
for the many months during which they saw no other white 
face.^ There was a single serious and important, albeit only 
partial, exception to this general rule of charity. After the 
outbreak of the Revolution, the Kentuckians, in common with 
other backwoodsmen, grew to thoroughly dislike one religious 
body which they already distrusted; this was the Church of 
England, the Episcopal Church. They long regarded it as 
merely the persecuting ecclesiastical arm of the British Govern- 
ment. Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at 
all had for the most part originally professed some form of 
Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a 
primer which, in one of its rude cuts, represented John Rogers 
at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and 
in their after-lives they were more familiar with the "Pilgrim's 
Progress" than with any other book, save the Bible; so that 
it was natural for them to distrust the successors of those 
who had persecuted Rogers and Bunyan.^ Still, the border 
communities were, as times then went, very tolerant in religious 
matters ; and of course most of the men had no chance to 

* Hale's "Trans-AIIeghany Pioneers," p. 251. 

^ " Pioneer Life in Kentucky," Daniel Drake, Cincinnati, 1870, p. 196 
(an invaluable work). 



258 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

display, or indeed to feel, sectarianism of any kind, for they 
had no issue to join, and rarely a church about which to rally. 

By the time Kentucky was settled the Baptists had begun 
to make headway on the frontier, at the expense of the Pres- 
byterians. The rough democracy of the border welcomed a 
sect which was itself essentially democratic. To many of 
the backwoodsmen's prejudices, notably their sullen and nar- 
row hostility toward all lanks, whether or not based on merit 
and learning, the Baptists' creed appealed strongly. Where 
their preachers obtained foothold, it was made a matter of 
reproach to the Presbyterian clergymen that they had been 
educated in early life for the ministry as for a profession. 
The love of liberty, and the defiant assertion of equality, so 
universal in the backwoods, and so excellent in themselves, 
sometimes took very warped and twisted forms, notably when 
they betrayed the backwoodsmen into the belief that the true 
democratic spirit forbade any exclusive and special training for 
the professions that produce soldiers, statesmen, or ministers. 

The fact that the Baptist preachers were men exactly similar 
to their fellows in all their habits of life not only gave them 
a good standing at once, but likewise enabled them very early 
to visit the farthest settlements, travelling precisely like other 
backwoodsmen ; and once there, each preacher, each earnest pro- 
fessor, doing bold and fearless missionary work, became the 
nucleus round which a little knot of true believers gathered. 
Two or three of them made short visits to Kentucky during 
the first few years of its existence. One, who went thither 
in the early spring of 1776, kept a journal ^ of his trip. He 
travelled over the Wilderness Road with eight other men. 
Three of them were Baptists like himself, who prayed every 
night ; and their companions, though they did not take part 
in the praying, did not interrupt it. Their journey through 
the melancholy and silent wilderness resembled in its incidents 

_*MS. Autobiography of Rev. William Hickman. He was born in Vir- 
ginia, February 4, 1747. A copy in Colonel Durrett's library at Louis- 
ville, Ky. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 259 

the countless other similar journeys that were made at that 
time and later. They suffered from cold and hunger and lack 
of shelter; they became footsore and weary, and worn out with 
driving the pack-horses. On the top of the lonely Cumberland 
Mountains they came upon the wolf -eaten remains of a previ- 
ous traveller, who had recently been killed by Indians. At 
another place they met four men returning — cowards, whose 
hearts had failed them when in sight of the promised land. 
While on the great Indian war trail they killed a buffalo, and 
thenceforth lived on its jerked meat. One night the wolves 
smelt the flesh, and came up to the camp-fire ; the strong hunt- 
ing-dogs rushed out with clamorous barking to drive them 
away, and the sudden alarm for a moment made the sleepy 
wayfarers think that roving Indians had attacked them. When 
they reached Crab Orchard their dangers were for the moment 
past ; all travellers grew to regard with affection the station by 
this little grove of wild apple-trees. It is worthy of note that 
the early settlers loved to build their homes near these natural 
orchards, moved by the fragrance and beauty of the bloom in 
spring.-^ 

The tired Baptist was not overpleased with Harrodstown, 
though he there listened to the preaching of one of his own 
sect.- He remarked "a poor town it was in those days," a 
couple of rows of smoky cabins, tenanted by dirty women and 
ragged children, while the tall, unkempt frontiersmen lounged 
about in greasy hunting-shirts, breech-clouts, leggings, and 
moccasins. There was little or no corn until the crops were 
gathered, and, like the rest, he had to learn to eat wild meat 
without salt. The settlers — as is always the case in frontier 
towns where the people are wrapped up in their own pursuits 
and rivalries, and are obliged to talk of one another for lack 
of outside interests — were divided by bickering, gossiping 
jealousies ; and at this time they were quarrelling as to whether 

^ There were at least three such "Crab-Orchard" stations in Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee. The settlers used the word "crab" precisely as 
Shakespeare does. 

^'A Mr. Finley.— Hickman MS. 



26o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the Virginian cabin-rights or Henderson's land-grants would 
prove valid. As usual, the zealous Baptist preacher found that 
the women were the first to "get religion," as he phrased it. 
Sometimes their husbands likewise came in with them ; at other 
times they remained indifferent. Often they savagely resented 
their wives and daughters being converted, visiting on the head 
of the preacher an anger that did not always find vent in mere 
words ; for the backwoodsmen had strong, simple natures, pow- 
erfully excited for good or evil, and those who were not God- 
fearing usually became active and furious opponents of all 
religion. 

It is curious to compare the description of life in a frontier 
fort as given by this undoubtedly prejudiced observer with 
the equally prejudiced, but golden, instead of sombre, hued, 
reminiscences of frontier life, over which the pioneers lovingly 
lingered in their old age. To these old men the long-vanished 
stockades seemed to have held a band of brothers, who were 
ever generous, hospitable, courteous, and fearless, always ready 
to help one another, never envious, never flinching from any 
foe,^ Neither account is accurate; but the last is quite as near 
the truth as the first. On the border, as elsewhere, but with 
the different qualities in even bolder contrast, there was much 
both of good and bad, of shiftless viciousness and resolute 
honesty. Many of the hunters were mere restless wanderers, 
who soon surrendered their clearings to small farming squat- 
ters but a degree less shiftless than themselves; the latter 
brought the ground a little more under cultivation, and then 
likewise left it and wandered onward, giving place to the third 
set of frontiersmen, the steady men who had come to stay. 
But often the first hunters themselves stayed and grew up 
as farmers and landed proprietors." Many of the earliest 
pioneers, including most of their leaders, founded families, 
which took root in the land and flourish to this day, the chil- 
dren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the old-time 
Indian fighters becoming Congressmen and judges, and officers 
* McAfee MSS. 'Ibid. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 261 

in the regular army and in the Federal and Confederate forces 
during the Civil VVar.^ In fact, the very first comers to a wild 
and dangerous country are apt to be men with fine qualities of 
heart and head ; it is not until they have partly tamed the land 
that the scum of the frontier drifts into it." 

In 1776, as in after-years, there were three routes that 
were taken by immigrants to Kentucky. One led by back- 
woods trails to the Greenbriar settlements, and thence down 
the Kanawha to the Ohio ; ^ but the travel over this was in- 
significant compared to that along the others. The two really 
important routes were the Wilderness Road, and that by water 
from Fort Pitt down the Ohio River. Those who chose the 
latter way embarked in roughly built little flatboats at Fort Pitt, 
if they came from Pennsylvania, or else at the old Redstone 
fort on the Monongahela, if from Maryland or Virginia, and 
drifted down with the current. Though this was the easiest 
method, yet the danger from Indians was so very great that 
most immigrants, the Pennsylvanians as well as the Mary- 
landers, Virginians, and North Carolinians,* usually went over- 
land by the Wilderness Road. This was the trace marked out 
by Boone, which to the present day remains a monument to 

* Such was the case with the Clarks, Boones, Seviers, Shelbys, Robert- 
sons, Logans, Cockes, Crocketts, etc., many of whose descendants it has 
been my good fortune personally to know. 

^ This is as true to-day in the far West as it was formerly in Kentucky 
and Tennessee ; at least, to judge by my own experience in the Little Mis- 
souri region, and in portions of the Kootenai, Coeur d'Alene, and Bighorn 
countries. 

^McAfee MSS. See also "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers." p. in. As Mr. 
Hale points out, this route, which was travelled by Floyd, Bullitt, the 
McAfees, and many others, has not received due attention, even in Colonel 
Speed's invaluable and interesting "Wilderness Road." 

* Up to 1783 the Kentucky immigrants came from the backwoods of 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and were of almost 
precisely the same character as those that went to Tennessee. — See Imlay, 
p. 168. At the close of the Revolutionary War, Tennessee and Kentucky 
were almost alike in population. But after that time the population of 
Kentucky rapidly grew varied, and the great immigration of upper-class 
Virginians gave it a peculiar stamp of its own. By 1796, when Logan 
was defeated for governor, the control of Kentucky had passed out of 
the hands of the pioneers ; whereas in Tennessee the old Indian fighters 
continued to give the tone to the social life of the State and remained in 
control until they died. 



262 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

his skill as a practical surveyor and engineer. Those going 
along it went on foot, driving their horses and cattle. At the 
last important frontier town they fitted themselves out with 
pack-saddles; for in such places two of the leading industries 
were always those of the pack-saddle maker and the artisan 
in deer leather. When there was need, the pioneer could of 
course make a rough pack-saddle for himself, working it up 
from two forked branches of a tree. If several families were 
together, they moved slowly in true patriarchal style. The 
elder boys drove the cattle, which usually headed the caravan; 
while the younger children were packed in crates of hickory 
withes and slung across the backs of the old quiet horses, or 
else were seated safely between the great rolls of bedding 
that were carried in similar fashion. The women sometimes 
rode and sometimes walked, carrying the babies. The men, 
rifle on shoulder, drove the pack-train, while some of them 
walked spread out in front, flank, and rear, to guard against 
the savages.^ A tent or brush lean-to gave cover at night. 
Each morning the men packed the animals while the women 
cooked breakfast and made ready the children. Special care 
had to be taken not to let the loaded animals brush against 
the yellow- jacket nests, which were always plentiful along 
the trail in the fall of the year; for in such a case the vicious 
swarms attacked man and beast, producing an immediate 
stampede, to the great detriment of the packs. ^ In winter 
the fords and mountains often became impassable, and trains 
were kept in one place for weeks at a time, escaping starvation 
only by killing the lean cattle; for few deer at that season 
remained in the mountains. 

* McAfee MSS. Just as the McAfee family started for Kentucky, the 
wife of one of their number, George, was confined. The others had to 
leave her ; but at the first long halt the husband hurried back, only to 
meet his wife on the way; for she had ridden after them just three days 
after her confinement, taking her baby along. 

^"Pioneer Biography," James McBride (son of a pioneer who was killed 
by the Indians in 1789 in Kentucky), p. 183, Cincinnati, 1869. One of the 
excellent series published by Robert Clarke & Co., to whom American 
■^listorians owe a special and unique debt of gratitude. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 263 

Both the water route and the Wilderness Road were infested 
by the savages at all times, and whenever there was open war 
the sparsely settled regions from which they started were like- 
wise harried. When the northwestern tribes threatened Fort 
Pitt and Fort Henry — or Pittsburgh and Wheeling, as they 
were getting to be called — they threatened one of the two lo- 
calities which served to cover the communications with Ken- 
tucky; but it was far more serious when the Holston region 
was menaced, because the land travel was at first much the 
more important. 

The early settlers, of course, had to suffer great hardship 
even when they reached Kentucky. The only two implements 
the men invariably carried were the axe and rifle, for they 
were almost equally proud of their skill as warriors, hunters, 
and wood-choppers. Next in importance came the sickle or 
scythe. The first three tasks of the pioneer farmer were to 
build a cabin, to make a clearing — burning the brush, cutting 
down the small trees, and girdling the large — and to plant 
corn. Until the crop ripened he hunted steadily, and his family 
lived on the abundant game, save for which it would have been 
wholly impossible to have settled Kentucky so early. H it was 
winter-time, however, all the wild meat was very lean and poor 
eating, unless by chance a bear was found in a hollow tree, 
when there was a royal feast, the breast of the wild turkey 
serving as a substitute for bread. ^ If the men were suddenly 
called away by an Indian inroad, their families sometimes had 
to live for days on boiled tops of green nettles.^ Naturally, 
the children watched the growth of the tasselled corn with 
hungry eagerness until the milky ears were fit for roasting. 
When they hardened, the grains were pounded into hominy in 
the hominy-block, or else ground into meal in the rough 
hand-mill, made of two limestones in a hollow sycamore log. 
Until flax could be grown the women were obliged to be 
content with lint made from the bark of dead nettles. This was 
gathered in the springtime by all the people of a station acting 
* McAfee MSS. "McBride, II, 197. 



264 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

together, a portion of the men standing guard while the 
rest, with the women and children, plucked the dead stalks. 
The smart girls of Irish ancestry spun many dozen cuts of 
linen from this lint, which was as fine as flax but not so 
strong.^ 

Neither hardship nor danger could render the young people 
downhearted, especially when several families, each containing 
grown-up sons and daughters, were living together in almost 
every fort. The chief amusements were hunting and dancing. 
There being no permanent ministers, even the gloomy Cal- 
vinism of some of the pioneers was relaxed. Long afterward 
one of them wrote, in a spirit of quaint apology, that "dancing 
was not then considered criminal," ^ and that it kept up 
the spirits of the young people, and made them more healthy 
and happy; and, recalling somewhat uneasily the merriment in 
the stations, in spite of the terrible and interminable Indian 
warfare, the old moralist felt obliged to condemn it, remark- 
ing that, owing to the lack of ministers of the gospel, the 
impressions made by misfortune were not improved. 

Though obliged to be very careful and to keep their fam- 
ilies in forts, and in spite of a number of them being killed 
by the savages,^ the settlers in 1 776 were able to wander about 
and explore the country thoroughly,* making little clearings 
as the basis of "cabin claims," and now and then gathering into 
stations which were for the most part broken up by the In- 
dians and abandoned.^ What was much more important, the 

* McAfee MSS. _ ^ 'Ibid. 
" Morehead, Appendix. Floyd's letter. 

* They retained few Indian names ; Kentucky in this respect differing 
from most other sections of the Union. The names were either taken from 
the explorers, as Floyd's Fork ; or from some natural peculiarity, as the 
Licking, so called from the number of game-licks along its borders ; or 
else they commemorated some incident. On Dreaming Creek Boone fell 
asleep and dreamed he was stung by yellow-jackets. The Elkhorn was so 
named because a hunter, having slain a monstrous bull elk, stuck up its 
horns on a pole at the mouth. At Bloody Run several men were slain. 
Eagle Branch was so called because of the many bald eagles round it. 
.See McAfee MSS. 

''Marshall, 45. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 265 

permanent settlers in the well-established stations proceeded to 
organize a civil government. 

They by this time felt little but contempt for the Hender- 
son or Transylvania government. Having sent a petition 
against it to the provincial authorities, they were confident that 
w^hat faint shadow of power it still retained would soon van- 
ish; so they turned their attention to securing a representa- 
tion in the Virginia Convention. All Kentucky was still 
considered as a part of Fincastle County, and the inhabitants 
were therefore unrepresented at the capital. They determined 
to remedy this; and, after due proclamation, gathered together 
at Harrodstown early in June, 1776. During five days an 
election was held, and two delegates were chosen to go to Wil- 
liamsburg, then the seat of government. 

This was done at the suggestion of Clark, who, having spent 
the winter in Virginia, had returned to Kentucky in the spring. 
He came out alone and on foot, and by his sudden appearance 
surprised the settlers not a little. The first to meet him was 
a young lad,^ who had gone a few miles out of Harrodstown 
to turn some horses on the range. The boy had killed a teal- 
duck that was feeding in a spring, and was roasting it nicely 
at a small fire when he was startled by the approach of a fine 
soldierly man, who hailed him : "How do you do, my little 
fellow? What is your name? Ar'n't you afraid of being 
in the woods by yourself?" The stranger was evidently hun- 
gry, for on being invited to eat he speedily finished the entire 
duck; and when the boy asked his name he answered that it 
was Clark, and that he had come out to see what the brave 
fellows in Kentucky were doing, and to help them if there 
was need. He took up his temporary abode at Harrodstown 
— visiting all the forts, however, and being much in the woods 
by himself — and his commanding mind and daring, adventur- 
ous temper speedily made him, what for ten critical years he 
remained, the leader among all the bold "hunters of Ken- 
tucky" — as the early settlers loved to call themselves. 
* Afterward General William Ray. — Butler, p. 27- 



266 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

He had advised against delegates to the convention being 
chosen, thinking that instead the Kentuckians should send ac- 
credited agents to treat with the Virginian government. If 
their terms were not agreed to, he declared that they ought 
to establish forthwith an independent State; an interesting 
example of how early the separatist spirit showed itself in 
Kentucky. But the rest of the people were unwilling to go 
quite as far. They elected two delegates, Clark of course 
being one. With them they sent a petition for admission as 
a separate county. They were primarily farmicrs, hunters, In- 
dian fighters — not scholars; and their petition was couched 
in English that was at times a little crooked; but the idea 
at any rate was perfectly straight, and could not be misunder- 
stood. They announced that if they were admitted they would 
cheerfully co-operate in every measure to secure the public 
peace and safety, and at the same time pointed out with marked 
emphasis "how impolitical it would be to suffer such a Re- 
spectable Body of Prime Riflemen to remain in a state of 
neutrality" during the then existing Revolutionary struggle.^ 

Armed with this document and their credentials, Clark and 
his companion set off across the desolate and Indian-haunted 
mountains. They travelled very fast, the season was extremely 
wet, and they did not dare to kindle fires for fear of the In- 
dians; in consequence, they suffered torments from cold, hun- 
ger, and especially from "scalded" feet. Yet they hurried on, 
and presented their petition to the governor - and council — the 
legislature having adjourned. Clark also asked for five hun- 
dredweight of gunpowder, of which the Kentucky settlement 
stood in sore and pressing need. This the council at first 
refused to give; whereupon Clark informed them that if the 
country was not worth defending, it was not worth claiming, 
making it plain that if the request was not granted, and if 
Kentucky was forced to assume the burdens of independence, 

^Petition of the committee of West Fincastle, dated June 20, 1776. It is 
printed in Colonel John Mason Brown's "Battle of the Blue Licks" pam- 
phlet. 

* Patrick Henry. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 267 

she would likewise assume its privileges. After this plain 
statement, the council yielded. Clark took the powder down 
the Ohio River, and got it safely through to Kentucky; though 
a party sent under John Todd to convey it overland from the 
Limestone Creek was met at the Licking and defeated by the 
Indians, Clark's fellow delegate being among the killed. 

Before returning, Clark had attended the fall meeting of 
the Virginia legislature, and in spite of the opposition of Hen- 
derson, who was likewise present, he procured the admission 
of Kentucky as a separate county, with boundaries correspond- 
ing to those of the present State. Early in the ensuing year, 
1777, the county was accordingly organized; Harrodstown, 
or Harrodsburg, as it was now beginning to be called, was 
made the county-seat, having by this time supplanted Boones- 
borough in importance. The court was composed of the six 
or eight men whom the governor of Virginia had commis- 
sioned as justices of the peace; they were empowered to meet 
monthly to transact necessary business, and had a sheriff and 
clerk.^ These took care of the internal concerns of the set- 
tlers. To provide for their defense a county lieutenant was 
created, with the rank of colonel,^ who forthwith organized a 
militia regiment, placing all the citizens, whether permanent 
residents or not, into companies and battalions. Finally, two 
burgesses were chosen to represent the county in the General 
Assembly of Virginia.^ In later years Daniel Boone himself 
served as a Kentucky burgess in the Virginia legislature;'* a 
very different body from the little Transylvania parliament 
in which he began his career as a lawmaker. The old back- 
woods hero led a strange life; varying his long wanderings 

^ Among their number were John Todd (Hkewise chosen burgess — in 
these early days a man of mark often filled several distinct positions at the 
same time), Benjamin Logan, Richard Calloway, John Bowman, and John 
Floyd ; the latter was an educated Virginian who was slain by the Indians 
before his fine natural qualities had time to give him the place he would 
otherwise assuredly have reached. 

^ The first colonel was John Bowman. 

'John Todd and Richard Calloway. See "Diary of George Rogers 
Clark," in 1776. Given by Morehead, p. 161. 

* Butler, 166. 



268 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and explorations, his endless campaigns against savage men and 
savage beasts, by serving as road-maker, town-builder, and 
commonwealth- founder, sometimes organizing the frontiers- 
men for foreign war and again doing his share in devising the 
laws under which they were to live and prosper. 

But the pioneers were speedily drawn into a life-and-death 
struggle which engrossed their whole attention to the exclu- 
sion of all merely civil matters; a struggle in which their land 
became in truth what the Indians called it — a dark and bloody 
ground, a land with blood-stained rivers.^ 

It was impossible long to keep peace on the border between 
the ever-encroaching whites and their fickle and bloodthirsty 
foes. The hard, reckless, often brutalized frontiersmen, greedy 
of land and embittered by the memories of untold injuries, 
regarded all Indians with sullen enmity, and could not be per- 
suaded to distinguish between the good and the bad.^ The 
central government was as powerless to restrain as to protect 
these far-off and unruly citizens. On the other hand, the In- 
dians were as treacherous as they were ferocious — Delawares, 
Shawnees, Wyandots, and all.^ While deceiving the com- 
mandants of the posts by peaceful protestations, they would 
steadily continue their ravages and murders ; and while it was 
easy to persuade a number of the chiefs and warriors of a 
tribe to enter into a treaty, it was impossible to make the re- 
mainder respect it.^ The chiefs might be for peace, but the 
young braves were always for war, and could not be kept 
back.^ 

*The Iroquois, as well as the Cherokees, used these expressions con- 
cerning portions of the Ohio valley. — Heckewelder, ii8. 

^ State Department MSS., No. 147, vol. VI, March 15, 1781. 

"As one instance among many, see Ilaldimand MSS., letter of Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel Hamilton, August 17, 1778, where Girty reported, on behalf 
of the Delawares, the tribe least treacherous to the Americans, that even 
these Indians were only going in to Fort Pitt and keeping up friendly 
relations with its garrison so as to deceive the whites, and that as soon 
as tlicir corn was ripe they would move off to the hostile tribes. 

* State Department MSS., No. 150, vol. I, p. 107. Letter of Captain John 
Doughty. 

^ Ibid., No. 150, vol. I, p. 115. Examination of John Leith. 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 269 

In July, 1776, the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingo chiefs 
assembled at Fort Pitt and declared for neutralit}^ ; ^ the Iro- 
quois ambassadors, who were likewise present, haughtily an- 
nounced that their tribes would permit neither the British nor 
the Americans to march an army through their territory. They 
disclaimed any responsibility for what might be done by a few 
wayward young men ; and requested the Delawares and Shaw- 
nees to do as they had promised, and to distribute the Iroquois 
"talk" among their people. After the Indian fashion, they 
emphasized each point which they wished kept in mind by the 
presentation of a string of wampum.^ 

Yet at this very time a party of Mingos tried to kill the 
American Indian agents, and were only prevented by Corn- 
stalk, whose noble and faithful conduct was so soon to be re- 
warded by his own brutal murder. Moreover, while the 
Shawnee chief was doing this, some of his warriors journeyed 
down to the Cherokees and gave them the war-belt, assuring 
them that the Wyandots and Mingos would support them, 
and that they themselves had been promised ammunition by 
the French traders of Detroit and the Illinois.^ On their re- 
turn home this party of Shawnees scalped two men in Ken- 
tucky near the Big Bone Lick, and captured a woman ; but they 
were pursued by the Kentucky settlers, two were killed, and 
the woman retaken.* 

Throughout the year the outlook continued to grow more 
and more threatening. Parties of young men kept making 
inroads on the settlements, especially in Kentucky; not only 
did the Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and Iroquois ^ act thus, 
but they were even joined by bands of Ottawas, Pottawatomies, 
and Chippewas from the lakes, who thus attacked the white 
settlers long ere the latter had either the will or the chance to 
hurt them. 

2 "American Archives," 5th Series, vol. I, p. 36. 
*"The Olden Time," Neville B. Craig, II, p. 115. 
'"American Archives," 5th Series, vol. I, p. in. 
* Ibid., p. 137. 
^ Ibid., vol. II, pp. 516, 1236. 



270 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Until the spring of 1777 ^ the outbreak was not general, and 
it was supposed that only some three or four hundred war- 
riors had taken up the tomahawk.- Yet the outlying settlers 
were all the time obliged to keep as sharp a lookout as if 
engaged in open war. Throughout the summer of 1776 the 
Kentucky settlers were continually harassed. Small parties 
of Indians were constantly lurking round the forts, to shoot 
down the men as they hunted or worked in the fields, and to 
carry off the women. There was a constant and monotonous 
succession of unimportant forays and skirmishes. 

One band of painted marauders carried off Boone's daugh- 
ter. She was in a canoe with two other girls on the river 
near Boonesborough when they were pounced on by five In- 
dians.^ As soon as he heard the news Boone went in pursuit 

S When Cornstalk was so foully murdered by the whites ; although the 
outbreak was then already started. 

^ Madison MSS. But both the American statesmen and the Continental 
officers were so deceived by the treacherous misrepresentations of the 
Indians that they often greatly underestimated the numbers of the Indians 
on the war-path ; curiously enough, their figures are frequently much more 
erroneous than those of the frontiersmen. Thus the Madison MSS. and 
State Department MSS. contain statements that only a few hundred north- 
western warriors were in the field at the very time that two thousand had 
been fitted out at Detroit to act along the Ohio and Wabash — as we learn 
from De Peyster's letter to Haldimand of May 17, 1780 (in the Haldi- 
mand MSS.). 

* On July 14, 1776. The names of the three girls were Betsy and Fanny 
Callaway and Jemima Boone. See Boone's "Narrative" ; and Butler, who 
gives the letter of July 21, 1776, written by Colonel John Floyd, one of 
the pursuing party. 

The names of the lovers, in their order, were Samuel Henderson (a 
brother of Richard), John Holder, and Flanders Callaway. Three weeks 
after the return to the fort. Squire Boone united in marriage the eldest 
pair of lovers, Samuel Henderson and Betsy Callaway. It was the first 
wedding that ever took place in Kentucky. Both the other couples were 
likewise married a year or two later. 

The whole story reads like a page out of one of Cooper's novels. The 
two younger girls gave way to despair when captured ; but Betsy Callaway 
was sure they would be followed and rescued. To mark the line of their 
flight she broke off twigs from the bushes, and when threatened with the 
tomahawk for doing this, she tore off strips from her dress. The Indians 
carefully covered tbeir trail, compelling the girls to walk apart, as their 
captors did, in the thick cane, and to wade up and down the little brooks. 

Boone started in pursuit the same evening. All next day he followed 
the tangled trail like a bloodhound, and early the following morning came 
on the Indians, camped by a buffalo calf which they had just killed and 



GROWTH OF KENTUCKY 271 

with a party of seven men from the fort, including the three 
lovers of the captured girls. After following the trail all 
of one day and the greater part of two nights, the pursuers 
came up with the savages, and, rushing in, scattered or slew 
them before they could either make resistance or kill their 
captives. The rescuing party then returned in triumph to the 
fort. 

Thus for two years the pioneers worked in the wilderness, 
harassed by unending individual warfare, but not threatened 
by any formidable attempt to oust them from the lands that 
they had won. During this breathing spell they established 
civil government, explored the country, planted crops, and 
built strongholds. Then came the inevitable struggle. When 
in 1777 the snows began to melt before the lengthening spring 
days, the riflemen who guarded the log forts were called on to 
make head against a series of resolute efforts to drive them 
from Kentucky. 

were about to cook. The rescue was managed very adroitly ; for had any 
warning been given the Indians would have instantly killed their captives, 
according to their invariable custom. Boone and Floyd each shot one of 
the savages, and the remaining three escaped almost naked, without gun, 
tomahawk, or scalping-knife. The girls were unharmed ; for the Indians 
rarely molested their captives on the journey to the home towns, unless 
their strength gave out, when they were tomahawked without mercy. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

1777-1778 

IN the fall of 1776 it became evident that a formidable 
Indian war was impending. At Detroit great councils 
were held by all the northwestern tribes, to whom the Six 
Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they might cease their 
feuds and join against the Americans. The later councils 
were summoned by Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant- 
governor of the northwestern region, whose headquarters were 
at Detroit. He was an ambitious, energetic, unscrupulous man, 
of bold character, who wielded great influence over the In- 
dians ; and the conduct of the war in the West, as well as the 
entire management of frontier affairs, was intrusted to him 
by the British Government.^ He had been ordered to enlist 
the Indians on the British side, and have them ready to act 
against the Americans in the spring;- and, accordingly, he 
gathered the tribes together. He himself took part in the 
war-talks, plying the Indians with presents and fire-water no 
less than with speeches and promises. The head men of the 
different tribes, as they grew excited, passed one another black, 
red, or bloody, and tomahawk belts, as tokens of the ven- 
geance to be taken on their white foes. One Delaware chief 
still held out for neutrality, announcing that if he had to side 
with either set of combatants it would be with the "buckskins," 
or backwoodsmen, and not with the redcoats; but the bulk of 
the warriors sympathized with the Half King of the Wyandots 

* Haldimand MSS. Sir Guy Carleton to Hamilton, September 26, 1777. 
' Ibid., Carleton to Hamilton, October 6, 1776. 

272 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 273 

when he said that the Long Knives had for years interfered 
with the Indians' hunting, and that now at last it was the In- 
dians' turn to threaten revenge.-^ 

Hamilton was for the next two years the mainspring of 
Indian hostility to the Americans in the Northwest. From the 
beginning he had been anxious to employ the savages against 
the settlers, and when the home government bade him hire 
them he soon proved himself very expert, as well as very 
ruthless, in their use.- He rapidly acquired the venomous 
hatred of the backwoodsmen, who held him in peculiar ab- 
horrence, and nicknamed him the "hair-buyer" general, assert- 
ing that he put a price on the scalps of the Americans. This 
allegation may have been untrue, as affecting Hamilton per- 
sonally; he always endeavored to get the war-parties to bring 
in prisoners, and behaved well to the captives when they were 
in his power; nor is there any direct evidence that he himself 
paid out money for scalps. But scalps were certainly bought 
and paid for at Detroit;^ and the commandant himself was 
accustomed to receive them with formal solemnity at the coun- 
cils held to greet the war-parties when they returned from suc- 
cessful raids."* The only way to keep the friendship of the 
Indians was continually to give them presents ; these presents 
were naturally given to the most successful warriors; and the 
scalps were the only safe proofs of a warrior's success. Doubt- 
less the commandant and the higher British officers generally 
treated the Americans humanely when they were brought into 
contact with them ; and it is not likely that they knew, or were 
willing to know, exactly what the savages did in all cases. 

^"American Archives," ist Series, vol. II, p. 517. There were several 
councils held at Detroit during this fall, and it is difficult — and not very 
important — to separate the incidents that occurred at each. Some took 
place before Hamilton arrived, which, according to his "brief account," 
was November 9th. He asserts that he did not send out war-parties until 
the following June ; but the testimony seems conclusive that he was active 
in instigating hostility from the time of his arrival. 

* Haldimand MSS. Germaine to Carleton, March 26, 1777. 

' See the "American Pioneer," I, 292, for a very curious account of an 
Indian who, by dividing a large scalp into two, got iifty dollars for each 
half at Detroit. * Haldimand MSS., passim; also Heckcwelder, etc. 



274 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

But they at least connived at the measures of their subordi- 
nates. These were hardened, embittered men who paid for the 
zeal of their Indian alHes accordingly as they received tangi- 
ble proof thereof; in other words, they hired them to murder 
non-combatants as well as soldiers, and paid for each life, of 
any sort, that was taken. The fault lay primarily with the 
British Government, and with those of its advisers who, like 
Hamilton, advocated the employment of the savages. They 
thereby became participants in the crimes committed ; and it was 
idle folly for them to prate about having bidden the savages 
to be merciful. The sin consisted in having let them loose on 
the borders ; once they were let loose it was absolutely im- 
possible to control them. Moreover, the British sinned against 
knowledge; for some of their highest and most trusted officers 
on the frontier had written those in supreme command, relat- 
ing the cruelties practised by the Indians upon the defenseless, 
and urging that they should not be made allies, but rather 
that their neutrality only should be secured.^ The average 
American backwoodsman was quite as brutal and inconsid- 
erate a victor as the average British officer; in fact, he was 
in all likelihood the less humane of the two; but the English- 
man deliberately made the deeds of the savage his own. Mak- 
ing all allowance for the strait in which the British found 
themselves, and admitting that much can be said against their 
accusers, the fact remains that they urged on hordes of savages 
to slaughter men, women, and children along the entire fron- 
tier; and for this there must ever rest a dark stain on their 
national history. 

Hamilton organized a troop of white rangers from among 
the French, British, and Tories at Detroit. They acted as 
allies of the Indians, and furnished leaders to them. Three 
of these leaders were the Tories McKee, Elliott, and Girty, 
who had fled together from Pittsburgh ; - they all three warred 

^ E. g., in Haldimand MSS. Lieutenant-Governor Abbott to General 
Carleton, June 8, 1778. 

'^Ibid., Hamilton's letter, April 25, 1778. 

"April the 20th — Edward Hayle (who had undertaken to carry a letter 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 275 

against their countrymen with determined ferocity. Girty won 
the widest fame on the border by his cunning and cruelty; 
but he was really a less able foe than the two others. McKee 
in particular showed himself a fairly good commander of 
Indians and irregular troops ; as did likewise an English- 
man named Caldwell, and two French partisans, de Quindre 
and Lamothe, who were hearty supporters of the British. 

Hamilton and his subordinates, both red and white, were 
engaged in what was essentially an effort to exterminate the 
borderers. They were not endeavoring merely to defeat the 
armed bodies of the enemy. They were explicitly bidden by 
those in supreme command to push back the frontier, to expel 
the settlers from the country. Hamilton himself had been 
ordered by his immediate official superior to assail the bor- 
ders of Pennsylvania and Virginia with his savages, to de- 
stroy the crops and buildings of the settlers who had advanced 
beyond the mountains, and to give to his Indian allies — the 
Hurons, Shawnees, and other tribes — all the land of which 
they thus took possession.^ With such allies as Hamilton 
had, this order was tantamount to proclaiming a war of exter- 
mination, waged with appalling and horrible cruelty against 
the settlers, of all ages and sexes. It brings out in bold relief 
the fact that in the West the war of the Revolution was an 
effort on the part of Great Britain to stop the westward growth 

from me to the Moravian Minister at Kushayhking) returned, having exe- 
cuted his commission — he brought me a letter & Newspapers from Mr. 
McKee who was Indian agent for the Crown and has been a long time 
in the hands of the Rebels at Fort Pitt, at length has found means to 
make his escape with three other men, two of the name of Girty (men- 
tioned in Lord Dunmore's list) interpreters & Matthew Elliott the young 
man who was last summer sent down from this place a prisoner. — This 
last person I am informed has been at New York since he left Quebec, 
and probably finding the change in affairs unfavorable to the Rebels, has 
slipp'd away to make his peace here. 

"23d — Hayle went off again to conduct them all safe through the Vil- 
lages having a letter & Wampum for that purpose. Alexander McKee 
is a man of good character, and has great influence with the Shawanese 
is well acquainted with the country & can probably give some useful intel- 
ligence, he will probably reach this place in a few days." 

'Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Hamilton, August 6, 1778. 



2^^ THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of the English race in America, and to keep the region beyond 
the Alleghanies as a region where only savages should dwell. 

All through the winter of 'y6-yy the northwestern Indians 
were preparing to take up the tomahawk. Runners were sent 
through the leafless, frozen woods from one to another of 
their winter camps. In each bleak, frail village, each snow- 
hidden cluster of bark wigwams, the painted, half-naked war- 
riors danced the war-dance, and sang the war-song, beating 
the ground with their war-clubs and keeping time with their 
feet to the rhythmic chant as they moved in rings round the 
peeled post, into which they struck their hatchets. The heredi- 
tary sachems, the peace chiefs, could no longer control the 
young men. The braves made ready their weapons and battle- 
gear; their bodies were painted red and black, the plumes of 
the war-eagle were braided into their long scalp-locks, and some 
put on necklaces of bears' claws, and head-dresses made of 
panther skin, or of the shaggy and horned frontlet of the 
buffalo.^ Before the snow was off the ground the war-parties 
crossed the Ohio and fell on the frontiers from the Mononga- 
hela and Kanawha to the Kentucky.^ 

On the Pennsylvania and Virginian frontiers the panic was 
tremendous. The people fled into the already existing forts. 
or hastily built others ; where there were but two or three 
families in a place, they merely gathered into blockhouses — 
stout log cabins two stories high, with loopholed walls, and 
the upper story projecting a little over the lower. The sav- 
ages, well armed with weapons supplied them from the British 
arsenals on the Great Lakes, spread over the country; and 
there ensued all the horrors incident to a war waged as relent- 
lessly against the most helpless non-combatants as against the 
armed soldiers in the field. Blockhouses were surprised and 

* For instances of an Indian wearing this buffalo cap, with the horns on, 
see Kercheval and De Haas. 

* State Department MSS. for 1777, passim. So successful were the 
Indian chiefs in hoodwinking the officers at Fort Pitt that some of the 
latter continued to believe that only three or four hundred Indians had 
gone on the war-path. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 277 

burnt; bodies of militia were ambushed and destroyed. The 
settlers were shot down as they sat by their hearthstones in 
the evening, or ploughed the ground during the day ; the lurk- 
ing Indians crept up and killed them while they still-hunted 
the deer, or while they lay in wait for the elk beside the well- 
beaten game trails. 

The captured women and little ones were driven off to the 
far interior. The weak among them, the young children, 
and the women heavy with child, were tomahawked and scalped 
as soon as their steps faltered. The able-bodied, who could stand 
the terrible fatigue, and reached their journey's end, suffered va- 
rious fates. Some were burned at the stake, others were sold 
to the French or British traders, and long afterward made 
their escape, or were ransomed by their relatives. Still others 
were kept in the Indian camps, the women becoming the slaves 
of the warriors,^ while the children were adopted into the tribe, 
and grew up precisely like their little red-skinned playmates. 
Sometimes, when they had come to full growth, they rejoined 
the whites; but generally they were enthralled by the wild 
freedom and fascination of their forest life, and never forsook 
their adopted tribesmen, remaining inveterate foes of their 
own color. Among the ever-recurring tragedies of the fron- 
tier, not the least sorrowful was the recovery of these long- 
missing children by their parents, only to find that they had 
lost all remembrance of and love for their father and mother, 
and had become irreclaimable savages, who eagerly grasped 
the first chance to flee from the intolerable irksomeness and 
restraint of civilized life." 

^ Occasionally we come across records of the women afterward mak- 
ing their escape; very rarely they took their half-breed babies with them. 
De Haas mentions one such case where the husband, though he received 
his wife well, always hated the copper-colored addition to his family ; the 
latter, by the way, grew up a thorough Indian, could not be educated, and 
finally ran away, joined the Revolutionary army, and was never heard of 
afterward. 

^ For an instance where a boy finally returned, see "Trans-Alleghany 
Pioneers," p. 119; see also pp. 126, 132, 133, for instances of the capture 
and treatment of whites by Indians. 



278 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Among others, the stockade at WheeHng ^ was attacked by 
two or three hundred Indians ; with them came a party of De- 
troit Rangers, marshalled by drum and fife, and carrying the 
British colors.^ Most of the men inside the fort were drawn 
out by a stratagem, fell into an ambuscade and were slain ; but 
the remainder made good the defense, helped by the women, 
who ran the lead into bullets, cooled and loaded the guns, and 
even when the rush was made, assisted to repel it by firing 
through the loopholes. After making a determined effort to 
storm the stockade, in which some of the boldest warriors 
were slain while trying in vain to batter down the gates with 
heavy timbers, the baffled Indians were obliged to retire dis- 
comfited. The siege was chiefly memorable because of an 
incident which is to this day a staple theme for story-telling 
in the cabins of the mountaineers. One of the leading men 
of the neighborhood was Major Samuel McColloch, renowned 
along the border as the chief in a family famous for its Indian 
fighters, the dread and terror of the savages, many of whose 
most noted warriors he slew, and at whose hands he himself, 
in the end, met his death. When Wheeling was invested, he 
tried to break into it, riding a favorite old white horse. But 
the Indians intercepted him, and hemmed him in on the brink 
of an almost perpendicular slope, ^ some three hundred feet 
high. So sheer was the descent that they did not dream any 
horse could go down it, and instead of shooting they advanced 

* Fort Henry. For an account of the siege, see De Haas, pp. 223-340. 
It took place in the early days of September. 

^ The accounts of the different sieges of Wheeling were first written 
down from the statements of the pioneers when they had grown very aged. 
In consequence, there is much uncertainty as to the various incidents. 
1"hus there seems to be a doubt whether Girty did or did not command 
the Indians in this first siege. The frontiersmen hated Girty as they did 
no other man, and he was credited with numerous actions done by other 
white leaders of the Indians ; the British accounts say comparatively little 
aliout him. He seems to have often fought with the Indians as one of 
their own number, while his associates led organized bands of rangers; 
he was thus more often brought into contact with the frontiersmen, but 
was really hardly as dangerous a foe to them as were one or two of his 
Tory companions. 

* The hill overlooks Wheeling ; the slope has now much crumbled away, 
.and in consequence has lost its steepness. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 279 

to capture the man whom they hated. McColloch had no 
thought of surrendering, to die by fire at the stake, and he 
had as httle hope of resistance against so many foes. WheeHng 
short round, he sat back in the saddle, shifted his rifle into 
his right hand, reined in his steed, and spurred him over the 
brink. The old horse never faltered, but plunged headlong 
down the steep, boulder-covered cliff-broken slope. Good luck, 
aided by the wonderful skill of the rider and the marvellous 
strength and surefootedness of his steed, rewarded, as it de- 
served, one of the most daring feats of horsemanship of which 
we have any authentic record. There was a crash, the shock 
of a heavy body, half springing, half falling, a scramble among 
loose rocks, and the snapping of saplings and bushes ; and in 
another moment the awe-struck Indians above saw their un- 
harmed foe, galloping his gallant white horse in safety across 
the plain. To- this day the place is known by the name of Mc- 
Colloch's Leap.-^ 

In Virginia and Pennsylvania the Indian outrages meant 
only the harassing of the borderers; in Kentucky, they threat- 
ened the complete destruction of the vanguard of the white 
advance and, therefore, the stoppage of all settlement west of 
the Alleghanies until after the Revolutionary War, when very 
possibly the soil might not have been ours to settle. Fortu- 
nately, Hamilton did not yet realize the importance of the 
Kentucky settlements, nor the necessity of crushing them, 
and during 1777 the war bands organized at Detroit were 
sent against the country round Pittsburgh ; while the feeble 
forts in the far Western wilderness were only troubled by 
smaller war-parties raised among the tribes on their own ac- 
count. A strong expedition, led by Hamilton in person, would 
doubtless at this time have crushed them. 

At it was, there were still so few whites in Kentucky that 
they were greatly outnumbered by the invading Indians. They 
were, in consequence, unable to meet the enemy in open field, 

^In the West this feat is as well known as is Putnam's similar deed in 
the North. 



28o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and gathered in their stations or forted villages. Therefore 
the early conflicts, for the most part, took the form of sieges 
of these wooden forts. Such sieges had little in common with 
the corresponding operations of civilized armies. The In- 
dians usually tried to surprise a fort ; if they failed, they oc- 
casionally tried to carry it by open assault, or by setting fire 
to it, but very rarely, indeed, beleaguered it in form. For this 
they lacked both the discipline and the commissariat. Accord- 
ingly, if their first rush miscarried, they usually dispersed in 
the woods to hunt, or look for small parties of whites ; always, 
however, leaving some of their number to hover round the 
fort and watch anything that took place. Masters in the art 
of hiding, and able to conceal themselves behind a bush, a 
stone, or a tuft of weeds, they skulked round the gate before 
dawn, to shoot the white sentinels; or they ambushed the 
springs, and killed those who came for water ; they slaughtered 
all of the cattle that had not been driven in, and any one ven- 
turing incautiously beyond the walls was certain to be waylaid 
and murdered. Those who were thus hemmed in the fort 
were obliged to get game on which to live; the hunters ac- 
cordingly were accustomed to leave before daybreak, travel 
eight or ten miles, hunt all day at the risk of their lives, and 
return after dark. Being of course the picked men of the 
garrison, they often eluded the Indians, or slew them if an 
encounter took place, but very frequently indeed they were 
themselves slain. The Indians always trusted greatly to wiles 
and feints to draw their foes into their power. As ever in 
this woodland fighting, their superiority in hiding, or taking 
advantage of cover, counterbalanced the superiority of the 
whites as marksmen; and their war-parties were thus at least 
a match, man against man, for the Kentuckians, though the 
latter, together with the Watauga men, were the best woods- 
men and fighters of the frontier. Only a very few of the whites 
became, like Boone and Kenton, able to beat the best of the 
savages at their own game. 

The innumerable sieges that took place during the long years 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 281 

of Indian warfare dififered in detail, but generally closely re- 
sembled one another as regards the main points. Those that 
occurred in 1777 may be considered as samples of the rest; 
and accounts of these have been preserved by the two chief 
actors, Boone and Clark. ^ Boonesborough, which was held by 
twenty-two riflemen, was attacked twice, once in April and 
again in July, on each occasion by a party of fifty or a hundred 
warriors.^ The first time the garrison was taken by surprise ; 
one man lost his scalp, and four were wounded, including 
Boone himself, who had been commissioned as captain in the 
county militia.^ The Indians promptly withdrew when they 
found they could not carry the fort by a sudden assault. On 
the second occasion the whites were on their guard, and though 
they had one man killed and two wounded (leaving but thir- 
teen unhurt men in the fort), they easily beat off the assail- 
ants, and slew half a dozen of them. This time the Indians 
stayed around two days, keeping up a heavy fire, under cover 
of which they several times tried to burn the fort."* 

Logan's Station at St. Asaphs was likewise attacked ; ^ it 
was held by only fifteen gunmen. When the attack was made 
the women, guarded by part of the men, were milking the cows 
outside the fort. The Indians fired at them from the thick 
cane that stood near by, killing one man and wounding two 

* In Boone's "Narrative," written down by Filson, and in Clark's "Diary," 
as given by Morehead. The McAfee MSS. and Butler's history give some 
valuable information. Boone asserts that at this time the "Long Knives" 
proved themselves superior to their foe in almost every battle ; but the facts 
do not seem to sustain him, though the statement was doubtless true as 
regards a few picked men. His estimates of the Indian numbers and 
losses must be received with great caution. 

^ Boone says April 15th and July 4th. Clark's "Diary" makes the first 
date April 24th. Boone says one hundred Indians, Clark "40 or 50." 
Clark's account of the loss on both sides agrees tolerably well with Boone's. 
Clark's "Diary" makes the second attack take place on May 23d. His 
dates are probably correct, as Boone must have written only from memory. 

' Two of the other wounded men were Captain John Todd and Boone's 
old hunting companion, Stoner. 

* Clark's "Diary." 

"Boone says July 19th, Clark's "Diary" makes it May 30th: Clark is 
undoubtedly right; he gives the names of the man who was killed and 
of the two who were wounded. 



282 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

others, one mortally.^ The party, of course, fled to the fort, 
and on looking back they saw their mortally wounded friend 
weltering on the ground. His wife and family were within 
the walls ; through the loopholes they could see him yet alive, 
and exposed every moment to death. So great was the danger 
that the men refused to go out to his rescue, whereupon Logan 
alone opened the gate, bounded out, and seizing the wounded 
man in his arms, carried him back unharmed through a shower 
of bullets. The Indians continued to lurk around the neigh- 
borhood, and the ammunition grew very scarce. Thereupon 
Logan took two companions and left the fort at night to go 
to the distant settlements on the Holston, where he might 
get powder and lead. He knew that the Indians were watch- 
ing the Wilderness Road, and, trusting to his own hardiness 
and consummate woodcraft, he struck straight out across the 
cliff-broken, wood-covered mountains, sleeping wherever night 
overtook him, and travelling all day long with the tireless 
speed of a wolf.- He returned with the needed stores in ten 
days from the time he set out. These tided the people over 
the warm months. 

In the fall, when the hickories had turned yellow and the 
oaks deep red, during the weeks of still, hazy weather that 
mark the Indian summer, their favorite hunting-season,^ sav- 
ages again filled the land, and Logan was obliged to repeat 
his perilous journey.* He also continually led small bands 
of his followers against the Indian war and hunting parties, 
sometimes surprising and dispersing them, and harassing them 
greatly. Moreover, he hunted steadily throughout the year, 
for the most skilful hunters were, in those days of scarcity, 
obliged to spend much of their time in the chase. Once, while 

S The name of the latter was Burr Harrison; he died a fortnight after- 
ward. — Clark. 

"Not a fanciful comparison; the wolf is the only animal that an Indian 
or a trained frontiersman cannot tire out in several days' travel. Following 
a deer two days in light snow, I have myself gotten near enough to shoot 
it without difficulty. 

'Usually early in November.— McAfee MSS. * Marshall, 50. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 283 

at a noted game-lick, waiting for deer/ he was surprised by 
the Indians, and by their fire was wounded in the breast and 
had his right arm broken. Nevertheless, he sprang on his 
horse and escaped, though the savages were so close that one, 
leaping at him, for a moment grasped the tail of the horse. 
Every one of these pioneer leaders, from Clark and Boone 
to Sevier and Robertson, was required constantly to expose 
his life; each 'lost sons or brothers at the hands of the In- 
dians, and each thinned the ranks of the enemy with his own 
rifle. In such a primitive state of society the man who led 
others was expected to show strength of body no less than 
strength of mind and heart; he depended upon his physical 
prowess almost as much as upon craft, courage, and head-work. 
The founder and head of each little community needed not 
only a shrewd brain and commanding temper, but also the 
thews and training to make him excel as woodsman and hunter, 
and the heart and eye to enable him to stand foremost in every 
Indian battle. 

Clark spent most of the year at Harrodstown, taking part 
in the defense of Kentucky. All the while he was revolving 
in his bold, ambitious heart a scheme for the conquest of the 
Illinois country, and he sent scouts thither to spy out the land 
and report to him what they saw. The Indians lurked around 
Harrodstown throughout the summer ; and Clark and his com- 
panions were engaged in constant skirmishes with them. Once, 
warned by the uneasy restlessness of the cattle (that were 
sure to betray the presence of Indians if they got sight or smell 

* These game-licks were common, and were of enormous extent. Multi- 
tudes of game, through countless generations, had tramped the ground 
bare of vegetation, and had made deep pits and channels with their hoofs 
and tongues. See McAfee MSS. Sometimes the licks covered acres of 
ground, while the game trails leading toward them through the wood were 
as broad as streets, even one hundred feet wide. I have myself seen 
small game-licks, the largest not a hundred feet across, in the Selkirks, 
Coeur d'Alenes, and Bighorns, the ground all tramped up by the hoofs of 
elk, deer, wild sheep, and white goats, with deep furrows and hollows 
where the saline deposits existed. In the Little Missouri Bad Lands there 
is so much mineral matter that no regular licks are needed. As the game 
is killed off the licks become overgrown and lost. 



284 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of them), they were able to surround a party of ten or twelve, 
who were hidden in a tall slump of weeds. The savages were 
intent on cutting off some whites who were working in a tur- 
nip-patch two hundred yards from the fort; Clark's party 
killed three — he himself killing one — wounded another, and 
sold the plunder they took, at auction, for seventy pounds. 
At other times the skirmishes resulted differently, as on the 
occasion chronicled by Clark in his .diary, when they "went 
out to hunt Indians ; one wounded Squire Boone and escaped."^ 

The corn was brought in from the cribs under guard; one 
day, while shelling a quantity, a body of thirty-seven whites 
was attacked, and seven were killed or wounded, though the 
Indians were beaten off and two scalps taken. In spite of 
this constant warfare, the fields near the forts were gradually 
cleared and planted with corn, pumpkins, and melons; and 
marrying and mirth-making went on within the walls. One 
of Clark's .scouts, shortly after returning from the Illinois, 
got married, doubtless feeling he deserved some reward for 
the hardships he had suffered; on the wedding night Clark 
remarks that there was "great merriment." The rare and in- 
frequent expresses from Pittsburgh or Williamsburg brought 
letters telling of Washington's campaigns, which Clark read 
with absorbed interest. On the ist of October, having matured 
his plans for the Illinois campaign, he left for Virginia, to 
see if he could get the government to help him put them into 
execution. 

During the summer parties of backwoods militia from the 
Holston settlements — both Virginians and Carolinians — came 
out to help the Kentuckians in their struggle against the In- 
dians ; but they only stayed a few weeks, and then returned 
home. In the fall, however, several companies of immigrants 
came out across the mountains ; and at the same time the small 
parties of hunters succeeded in pretty well clearing the woods 
of Indians. Many of the lesser camps and stations had been 
broken up and at the end of the year there remained only 
^ Clark's "Diary," entry for July 9th. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 285 

four — Boonesborough, Harrodstown, Logan's Station at St. 
Asaphs, and McGarry's at the Shawnee Springs. They con- 
tained in all some five or six hundred permanent settlers, nearly 
half of them being able-bodied riflemen.^ 

Early in 1778, a severe calamity befell the settlements. In 
January, Boone went, with twenty-nine other men, to the Blue 
Licks to make salt for the different garrisons — for hitherto 
this necessary of life had been brought in, at great trouble 
and expense, from the settlements.- The following month, 
having sent three men back with loads of salt, he and all the 
others were surprised and captured by a party of eighty or 
ninety Miamis, led by two Frenchmen, named Baubin and Lor- 
imer.^ When surrounded, so that there was no hope of escape, 
Boone agreed that all should surrender on condition of being 
well treated. The Indians on this occasion loyally kept faith. 
The two Frenchmen were anxious to improve their capture 
by attacking Boonesborough; but the fickle savages were sat- 
isfied with their success, and insisted on returning to their vil- 
lages. Boone was taken, first to old Chillicothe, the chief 

^The McAfee MSS. give these four stations; Boone says there were but 
three. He was writing from memory, however, and was probably mis- 
taken; thus he says there were at that time settlers at the Falls, an evi- 
dent mistake, as there were none there till the following year. Collins, 
following Marshall, says there were at the end of the year only 102 men 
in Kentucky — 65 at Harrodstown, 22 at Boonesborough, 15 at Logan's. 
This is a mistake based on a hasty reading of Boone's "Narrative," which 
gives this number for July, and particularly adds that after that date they 
began to strengthen. In the McAfee MSS. is a census of Harrodstown 
for the fall of 1777, which sums up: Men in service, 81; men not in 
service, 4; women, 24; children above ten, 12; children under ten, 58; 
slaves above ten, 12; slaves under ten, 7; total, 198. In October Clark in 
his "Diary" records meeting 50 men with their families (therefore per- 
manent settlers), on their way to Boone, and 38 men on their way to 
Logan's. At the end of the year, therefore, Boonesborough and Harrods- 
town must have held about 200 souls apiece : Logan's and McGarry's were 
considerably smaller. The large proportion of young children testifies to 
the prolific nature of the Kentucky women, and also shows the permanent 
nature of the settlements. Two years previously, in 1775, there had been, 
perhaps, 300 people in Kentuclo,', but very many of them were not per- 
manent residents. 

' See Clark's "Diary," entry for October 25, 1777. 

'Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 35. Hamilton to Carleton, 
April 25. 1778. He says fourscore Miamis. 



286 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Shawnee town on the Little Miami, and then to Detroit, where 
Hamilton and the other Englishmen treated him well, and 
tried to ransom him for a hundred pounds sterling. However, 
the Indians had become very much attached to him, and re- 
fused the ransom, taking their prisoner back to Chillicothe. 
Here he was adopted into the tribe, and remained for two 
months, winning the good-will of the Shawnees by his cheer- 
fulness and his skill as a hunter, and being careful not to rouse 
their jealousy by any too great display of skill at the shooting- 
matches. 

Hamilton was urging the Indians to repeat their ravages of 
the preceding year ; Mingos, Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamis 
came to Detroit, bringing scalps and prisoners. A great coun- 
cil was held at that post early in June.^ All the northwestern 
tribes took part, and they received war-belts from the Iroquois 
and messages calling on them to rise as one man. They de- 
termined forthwith to fall on the frontier in force. By their 
war-parties, and the accompanying bands of Tories, Hamil- 
ton sent placards to be distributed among the frontiersmen, 
endeavoring both by threat and by promise of reward, to make 
them desert the patriot cause. - 

In June, a large war-party gathered at Chillicothe to march 
against Boonesborough, and Boone determined to escape at 
all hazards, so that he might warn his friends. One morning 
before sunrise he eluded the vigilance of his Indian companions 
and started straight through the woods for his home, where 
he arrived in four days, having had but one meal during the 
whole journey of a hundred and sixty miles. ^ 

On reaching Boonesborough he at once set about putting 
the fort in good condition; and being tried by court martial 
for the capture at the Blue Licks, he was not only acquitted 
but was raised to me rank of major. His escape had prob- 
ably disconcerted the Indian war-party, for no immediate at- 
tack was made on the fort. After waiting until August he got 

"Haldimand MSS., June 14, 1778. 'Ibid., April 25, 1778. 

' Boone's "Narrative " 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 287 

tired of the inaction, and made a foray into the Indian coun- 
try himself with nineteen men, defeating a small party of his 
foes on the Scioto. At the same time he learned that the main 
body of the Miamis had at last marched against Boonesborough. 
Instantly he retraced his steps with all possible speed, passed 
by the Indians and reached the threatened fort a day before 
they did. 

On the eighth day of the month the savages appeared before 
the stockade. They were between three and four hundred 
in number, Shawnees and Miamis, and were led by Captain 
Daigniau de Quindre, a noted Detroit partisan ;^ with him were 
eleven other Frenchmen, besides the Indian chiefs. They 
marched into view with British and French colors flying, and 
formally summoned the little wooden fort to surrender in the 
name of his Britannic Majesty. The negotiations that fol- 
lowed showed, on the part of both whites and reds, a curious 
mixture of barbarian cunning and barbarian childishness ; the 
account reads as if it were a page of Graeco-Trojan diplomacy.^ 
Boone first got a respite of two days to consider de Quindre's 
request, and occupied the time in getting the horses and cattle 
into the fort. At the end of the two days the Frenchmen came 
in person to the walls to hear the answer to his proposition, 
whereupon Boone jeered at him for his simplicity, thanking 
him in the name of the defenders for having given them time 
to prepare for defense, and telling him that now they laughed 
at his attack. De Quindre, mortified at being so easily out- 
witted, set a trap in his turn for Boone. He assured the latter 
that his orders from Detroit were to capture, not to destroy, 
the garrison, and proposed that nine of their number should 
come out and hold a treaty. The terms of the treaty are 
not mentioned; apparently it was to be one of neutrality, 
Boonesborough, acting as if it were a little independent and 
sovereign commonwealth, making peace on its own account 

^Haldimand MSS. August 17, 1778, Girty reports that four hundred 
Indians have gone to attack "Fort Kentuck." Hamilton's letter of Sep- 
tember i6th speaks of there being three hundred Shawnees with de Quindre 
(whom Boone calls Duquesne). ^ See Boone's "Narrative." 



288 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

with a particular set of foes. At any rate, de Quindre agreed 
to march his forces peaceably off when it was concluded. 

Boone accepted the proposition, but, being suspicious of the 
good faith of his opponents, insisted upon the conference 
being held within sixty yards of the fort. After the treaty 
was concluded the Indians proposed to shake hands with the 
nine white treaty-makers, and promptly grappled them.^ How- 
ever, the borderers wrested themselves free, and fled to the fort 
under a heavy fire, which wounded one of their number. 

The Indians then attacked the fort, surrounding it on every 
side and keeping up a constant fire at the loopholes. The 
whites replied in kind, but the combatants were so well covered 
that little damage was done. At night the Indians pitched 
torches of cane and hickory bark against the stockade, in the 
vain effort to set it on fire," and De Quindre tried to undermine 
the walls, starting from the water-mark. But Boone discov- 
ered the attempt, and sunk a trench as a countermine. Then 
de Quindre gave up and retreated on August 20th, after nine 
days' fighting, in which the whites had but two killed and 
four wounded; nor was the loss of the Indians much heavier.^ 

This was the last siege of Boonesborough. Had de Quindre 
succeeded he might very probably have swept the whites from 
Kentucky; but he failed, and Boone's successful resistance, 
taken together with the outcome of Clark's operations at the 
same time, insured the permanency of the American occupa- 
tion. The old-settled region lying around the original sta- 

^ Apparently there were eighteen Indians on the treaty ground, but these 
were probably, like the whites, unarmed. 

nicAfee MSS. 

' De Quindre reported to Hamilton that, though foiled, he had but two 
men killed and three wounded. — In Haldimand MSS., Hamilton to Haldi- 
mand, October 15, 1778. Often, however, these partisan leaders merely 
reported the loss in their own particular party of savages, taking no ac- 
count of the losses in the other liands that had joined them — as the Miamis 
joined the Shawnees in this instance But it is certain that Boone (or 
Filson, who really wrote the "Narrative") greatly exaggerated the facts 
in stating that thirty-seven Indians were killed, and that the settlers picked 
up one hundred and twenty-five pounds' weight of bullets which had been 
fired into the fort. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 289 

tions, or forts, was never afterward seriously endangered by 
Indian invasion. 

The savages continued to annoy the border throughout the 
years 1778. The extent of their ravages can be seen from the 
fact that, during the summer months those around Detroit 
alone brought in to Hamilton eighty-one scalps and thirty-four 
prisoners,^ seventeen of whom they surrendered to the Brit- 
ish, keeping the others either to make them slaves or else to 
put them to death with torture. During the fall they confined 
themselves mainly to watching the Ohio and the Wilderness 
Road, and harassing the immigrants who passed along them.^ 

Boone, as usual, roamed restlessly over the country, spying 
out and harrying the Indian war-parties, and often making 
it his business to meet the incoming bands of settlers, and to 
protect and guide them on the way to their intended homes.^ 
When not on other duty, he hunted steadily, for game was 
still plentiful in Kentucky, though fast diminishing, owing to 
the wanton slaughter made by some of the more reckless 
hunters.^ He met with many adventures, still handed down 
by tradition, in the chase of panther, wolf, and bear, of buffalo, 
elk, and deer. The latter he killed only when their hides and 
meat were needed, while he followed unceasingly the danger- 
ous beasts of prey, as being enemies of the settlers. 

Throughout these years the obscure strife, made up of the 
individual contests of frontiersman and Indian, went on almost 
without a break. The sieges, surprises, and skirmishes in 
which large bands took part were chronicled; but there is lit- 
tle reference in the books to the countless conflicts wherein 
only one or two men on a side were engaged. The West could 
never have been conquered, in the teeth of so formidable and 
ruthless a foe, had it not been for the personal prowess of the 

^ Haldimand MSS. Letter of Hamilton, September i6, 1778. Hamilton 
was continually sending out small war-parties ; thus he mentions that on 
August 25th a party of fifteen Miamis went out; on September 5th, thirty- 
one Miamis; on September 9th, one Frenchman, five Chippewas, and fifteen 
Miamis, etc. 

"McAfee MSS. "Marshall, 55. "McAfee MSS. 



290 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

pioneers themselves. Their natural courage and hardihood, 
and their long training in forest warfare/ made them able 
to hold their own and to advance step by step, where a peace- 
able population would have been instantly butchered or driven 
off. No regular army could have done what they did. Only 
trained woodsmen could have led the white advance into the 
vast forest-clad regions, out of which so many fair States 
have been hewn. The ordinary regular soldier was almost as 
helpless before the Indians in the woods as he would have 
been if blindfolded and opposed to an antagonist whose eyes 
were left uncovered. 

Much of the greatest loss, both to Indians and whites, was 
caused by this unending personal warfare. Every hunter, al- 
most every settler, was always in imminent danger of Indian 
attack, and in return was ever ready, either alone or with one 
or two companions, to make excursions against the tribes 
for scalps and horses. One or two of Simon Kenton's ex- 
periences during this year may be mentioned less for their 
own sake than as examples of innumerable similar deeds that 
were done, and woes that were suffered, in the course of the 
ceaseless struggle. 

Kenton was a tall, fair-haired man of wonderful strength 
and agility; famous as a runner and wrestler, an unerring 
shot, and a perfect woodsman. Like so many of these early 
Indian fighters, he was not at all bloodthirsty. He was a 
pleasant, friendly, and obliging companion ; and it was hard 
to rouse him to wrath. When once aroused, however, few 
were so hardy as not to quail before the terrible fury of his 
anger. He was so honest and unsuspecting that he was very 
easily cheated by sharpers ; and he died a poor man. He was 
a stanch friend and follower of Boone." Once, in a fight out- 

* The last point is important. No Europeans could have held their own 
for a fortnight in Kentucky ; nor is it likely that the Western men twenty 
years before, at the time of BradJock's war, could have successfully 
colonized such a far-off country. 

' See McClung's "Sketches of Western Adventure," pp. 86-1 17 ; the 
author had received from Kenton, and other pioneers, when very old, the 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 291 

side the stockade of Boonesborough, he saved the life of his 
leader by shooting an Indian who was on the point of toma- 
hawking him. Boone was a man of few words, cold and 
grave, accustomed to every kind of risk and hairbreadth escape, 
and as little apt to praise the deeds of others as he was to 
mention his own; but on this occasion he broke through his 
usual taciturnity to express his thanks for Kenton's help and 
his admiration for Kenton himself. 

Kenton went with his captain on the expedition to the Scioto. 
Pushing ahead of the rest, he was attracted by the sound of 
laughter in a cane-brake. Hiding himself, he soon saw two 
Indians approach, both riding on one small pony, and chatting 
and laughing together in great good humor. Aiming care- 
fully, he brought down both at once, one dead and the other 
severely wounded. As he rushed up to finish his work, his 
quick ears caught a rustle in the cane, and looking around he 
saw two more Indians aiming at him. A rapid spring to one 
side on his part made both balls miss. Other Indians came 
up ; but, at the same time, Boone and his companions appeared, 
running as fast as they could while still keeping sheltered. A 
brisk skirmish followed, the Indians retreated, and Kenton 
got the coveted scalp. When Boone returned to the fort, 
Kenton stayed behind with another man and succeeded in 
stealing four good horses, which he brought back in triumph. 

Much pleased with his success he shortly made another raid 
into the Indian country, this time with two companions. They 
succeeded in driving off a whole band of one hundred and 
sixty horses, which they brought in safety to the banks of 
the Ohio. But a strong wind was blowing, and the river was 
so rough that in spite of all their efforts they could not get 

tales of their adventures as young men. McClung's vo'.ume contains very 
valuable incidental information about the customs of life among the bor- 
derers, and about Indian warfare; but he is a very inaccurate and untrust- 
worthy writer; he could not even copy a printed narrative correctly (see 
his account of Slover's and McKnight's adventures), and his tales about 
Kenton must be accepted rather as showing the adventures incident to the 
life of a peculiarly daring Indian fighter than as being specifically and 
chronologically correct in Kenton's individual case. 



292 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the horses to cross; as soon as they were beyond their depth 
the beasts would turn round and swim back. The reckless 
adventurers could not make up their minds to leave the booty; 
and stayed so long, waiting for a lull in the gale, and wasting 
their time in trying to get the horses to take to the water 
in spite of the waves, that the pursuing Indians came up and 
surprised them. Their guns had become wet and useless, and 
no resistance could be made. One of them was killed, another 
escaped, and Kenton himself was captured. 

The Indians asked him if "Captain Boone" had sent him 
to steal horses; and when he answered frankly that the steal- 
ing was his own idea, they forthwith proceeded to beat him 
lustily with their ramrods, at the same time showering on him 
epithets that showed they had at least learned the profanity 
of the traders. They staked him out at night; tied so that he 
could move neither hand nor foot; and during the day he was 
bound on an unbroken horse, with his hands tied behind him 
so that he could not protect his face from the trees and bushes. 
This was repeated every day. After three days he reached 
the town of Chillicothe, stiff, sore and bleeding. 

Next morning he was led out to run the gantlet. A row 
of men, women, and boys, a quarter of a mile long, was formed, 
each with a tomahawk, switch, or club; at the end of the line 
was an Indian with a big drum, and beyond this was the council- 
house, which, if he reached, would for the time being protect 
him. The moment for starting arrived; the big drum was 
beaten ; and Kenton sprang forward in the race.^ Keeping his 
wits about him he suddenly turned to one side and darted off 
with the whole tribe after him. His wonderful speed and 
activity enabled him to keep ahead, and to dodge those who 
got in his way, and by a sudden double he rushed through an 
opening in the crowd, and reached the council-house, having 
been struck but three or four blows. 

He was not further molested that evening. Next morning 

' For this part of Kenton's adventures compare the "Last of the 
Mohicans." 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 293 

a council was held to decide whether he should be immediately 
burnt at the stake, or should first be led round to the different 
villages. The warriors sat in a ring to pass judgment, passing 
the war-club from one to another ; those who passed it in silence 
thereby voted in favor of sparing the prisoner for the moment, 
while those who struck it violently on the ground thus indi- 
cated their belief that he should be immediately put to death. 
The former prevailed, and Kenton was led from town to town. 
At each place he was tied to the stake, to be switched and beaten 
by the women and boys ; or else was forced to run the gantlet, 
while sand was thrown in his eyes and guns loaded with 
powder fired against his body to burn his flesh. 

Once, while on the march, he made a bold rush for liberty, 
all unarmed though he was ; breaking out of the line and run- 
ning into the forest. His speed was so great and his wind 
so good that he fairly outran his pursuers; but by ill luck, 
when almost exhausted, he came against another party of In- 
dians. After this he abandoned himself to despair. He was 
often terribly abused by his captors ; once one of them cut 
his shoulder open with an axe, breaking the bone. 

His face was painted black, the death color, and he was 
twice sentenced to be burned alive, at the Pickaway plains and 
at Sandusky. But each time he was saved at the last moment, 
once through a sudden spasm of mercy on the part of the 
renegade Girty, his old companion in arms at the time of 
Lord Dunmore's war, and again by the powerful intercession 
of the great Mingo chief, Logan. At last, after having run 
the gantlet eight times and been thrice tied to the stake, he 
was ransomed by some traders. They hoped to get valuable 
information from him about the border forts, and took him 
to Detroit. Here he stayed until his battered, wounded body 
was healed. Then he determined to escape, and formed his 
plan in concert with two other Kentuckians, who had been in 
Boone's party that was captured at the Blue Licks. They 
managed to secure some guns, got safely off, and came straight 



294 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

down through the great forests to the Ohio, reaching their 
homes in safety.^ 

Boone and Kenton have always been favorite heroes of 
frontier story — as much so as ever were Robin Hood and 
Little John in England. Both lived to a great age, and did 
and saw many strange things, and in the backwoods cabins 
the tale of their deeds has been handed down in traditional form 
from father to son and to son's son. They were known to 
be honest, fearless, adventurous, mighty men of their hands ; 
fond of long, lonely wanderings; renowned as woodsmen and 
riflemen, as hunters and Indian fighters. In course of time 
it naturally came about that all notable incidents of the chase 
and woodland warfare w'ere incorporated into their lives by 
the story-tellers. The facts were altered and added to by tra- 
dition year after year; so that the two old frontier warriors 
already stand in that misty group of heroes whose rightful 
title to fame has been partly overclouded by the haze of their 
mythical glories and achievements. 

NOTE 

During the early part of this century our more pretentious histo- 
rians who really did pay some heed to facts and wrote books that — 
in addition to their mortal dulness — were quite accurate, felt it undig"- 
nified and beneath them to notice the deeds of mere ignorant Indian 
fighters. They had lost all power of doing the best work ; for they 
passed their lives in a circle of small literary men, who shrank from 
any departure from conventional European standards. 

On the other hand, the men who wrote history for the mass of our 
people, not for the scholars, although they preserved much important 
matter, had not been educated up to the point of appreciating the value 
of evidence, and accepted undoubted facts and absurd traditions with 
equal good faith. Some of them (notably Flint and one or two of 

^ McClung gives the exact conversations that took place between Kenton, 
Logan, Girty, and the Indian chiefs. They are very dramatic, and may 
possil)ly be true ; the old pioneer would probably always remember even 
the words used on such occasions ; but I hesitate to give them because 
McClung is so loose in his statements. In the account of this very incident 
he places it in 'T], and says Kenton then accompanied Clark to the Illinois. 
But in reality — as we know from Boone — it took place in '78, and Kenton 
must have gone with Clark first. 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 295 

Boone's other biographers) evidently scarcely regarded truthfulness 
and accuracy of statement as being even desirable qualities in a history. 
Others wished to tell the facts, but lacked all power of discrimination. 
Certain of their books had a very wide circulation. In some out-of-the- 
way places they formed, with the almanac, the staple of secular litera- 
ture. But they did not come under the consideration of trained scholars, 
so their errors remained uncorrected ; and at this day it is a difficult, 
and often an impossible task, to tell which of the statements to accept 
and which to reject. 

Many of the earliest writers lived when young among the old com- 
panions of the leading pioneers, and long afterward wrote down from 
memory the stories the old men had told them. They were themselves 
often clergymen, and were usually utterly inexperienced in wild back- 
woods life, in spite of their early surroundings — exactly as to-day any 
town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain some half-educated men 
as ignorant of mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as 
the veriest lout on an Eastern farm. Accordingly, they accepted the 
wildest stories of frontier warfare with a faith that forcibly reminds 
one of the equally simple credulity displayed by the average classical 
scholar concerning early Greek and Roman prowess. Many of these 
primitive historians give accounts of overwhelming Indian numbers and 
enormous Indian losses that read as if taken from the books that tell of 
the Gaulish hosts the Romans conquered, and the Persian hordes the 
Greeks repelled ; and they are almost as untrustworthy. 

Some of the anecdotes they relate are not far removed from the 
Chinese-like tale — given, if my memory is correct, in Herodotus — of 
the Athenian soldier who went into action with a small grapnel or 
anchor attached by a chain to his waist, that he might tether himself 
out to resist the shock of the charging foe. A flagrant example is the 
story which describes how the white man sees an Indian very far off 
making insulting gestures ; how he forthwith loads his rifle with two 
bullets — which the narrator evidently thinks will go twice as far and 
twice as straight as one — and, taking careful aim, slays his enemy. 
Like other similar anecdotes, this is told of a good many different fron- 
tier heroes, the historian usually showing a delightful lack of knowledge 
of what is and what is not possible in hunting, tracking, and fighting. 
However, the utter ignorance of even the elementary principles of rifle- 
shooting may not have been absolutely confined to the historians. Any 
one accustomed to old hunters knows that their theories concerning their 
own weapons are often rather startling. A year ago last fall I was 
hunting some miles below my ranch (on the Little Missouri) to lay in 
the winter stock of meat, and was encamped for a week with an old 
hunter. We both had 45-75 Winchester rifles ; and I was much amused 
at his insisting that his gun "shot level" up to two hundred yards — a 
distance at which the ball really drops considerably over a foot. Yet 
he killed a good deal of game; so he must either in practice have disre- 
garded his theories, or else he must have always overestimated the dis- 
tances at which he fired. 



296 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The old writers of the simpler sort not only delighted in impossible 
feats with the rifle, but in equally impossible deeds of strength, tracking, 
and the like ; and they were very fond of attributing all the wonderful 
feats of which they had heard to a single favorite hero, not to speak of 
composing speeches for him. 

It seems — though it ought not to be — necessary to point out to some 
recent collectors of backwoods anecdotes, the very obvious truths ; that 
with the best intentions in the world the average backwoodsman often 
has difficulty in describing a confused chain of events exactly as they 
took place; that when the events are described after a long lapse of 
years many errors are apt to creep in ; and that when they are reported 
from tradition it is the rarest thing imaginable for the report to be 
correct. 



CHAPTER XIV 

CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 

1778 

KENTUCKY had been settled, chiefly through Boone's 
instrumentaHty, in the year that saw the first fighting 
of the Revolution, and it had been held ever since, 
Boone still playing the greatest part in the defense. Clark's 
more far-seeing and ambitious soul now prompted him to try 
and use it as a base from which to conquer the vast region 
northwest of the Ohio. 

The country beyond the Ohio was not, like Kentucky, a 
tenantless and debatable hunting-ground. It was the seat of 
powerful and warlike Indian confederacies, and of clusters 
of ancient French hamlets which had been founded generations 
before the Kentucky pioneers were born; and it also contained 
posts that were garrisoned and held by the soldiers of the 
British king. Virginia, and other colonies as well, made, it 
is true, vague claims to some of this territory.^ But their 

^ Some of the numerous land-speculation companies, which were so 
prominent about this time, both before and after the Revolution, made 
claims to vast tracts of territory in this region, having bought them for 
various trinkets from the Indian chiefs. Such were the "Illinois Land 
Company" and "Wabash Land Company," that, in 1773 and 175S, made 
purchases from the Kaskaskias and Piankeshaws. The companies were 
composed of British, American, and Canadian merchants and traders, of 
London, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Quebec, etc. Lord Dunmore was in 
the Wabash Company. The agents of the companies, in after-years, made 
repeated but unsuccessful efforts to get Congress to confirm their grants. 
Although these various companies made much noise at the time, they 
introduced no new settlers into the land, and, in fact, did nothing of 
lasting effect; so that it is mere waste of time to allude to most of them. 
See, however, the "History of Indiana," by John B. Dillon (Indianapolis, 
1859), pp. 102-109, etc. 

297 



298 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

titles were as unreal and shadowy as those acquired by the 
Spanish and Portuguese kings when the Pope, with empty 
munificence, divided between them the eastern and the west- 
ern hemispheres. For a century the French had held adverse 
possession; for a decade and a half the British, not the colo- 
nial authorities, had acted as their unchallenged heirs ; to the 
Americans the country was as much a foreign land as was 
Canada. It could only be acquired by force, and Clark's teem- 
ing brain and bold heart had long been busy in planning its 
conquest. He knew that the French villages, the only settle- 
ments in the land, were the seats of the British power, the 
headquarters whence their commanders stirred up, armed, and 
guided the hostile Indians. If these settled French districts 
were conquered, and the British posts that guarded them cap- 
tured, the whole territory would thereby be won for the Fed- 
eral Republic, and added to the heritage of its citizens ; while 
the problem of checking and subduing the northwestern In- 
dians would be greatly simplified, because the source of much 
of both their power and hostility would be cut off at the 
springs. The friendship of the French was invaluable, for they 
had more influence than any other people with the Indians. 

In 1777, Clark sent two young hunters as spies to the Il- 
linois country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes, though 
neither to them nor to any one else did he breathe a hint of 
the plan that was in his mind. They brought back word that, 
though some of the adventurous young men often joined either 
the British or the Indian war-parties, yet that the bulk of the 
French population took but little interest in the struggle, were 
lukewarm in their allegiance to the British flag, and were some- 
what awed by what they had heard of the backwoodsmen.^ 
Clark judged from this report that it would not be difficult to 
keep the French neutral if a bold policy, strong as well as con- 
ciliatory, was pursued toward them; and that but a small 

^The correctness of this account is amply confirmed by the Haldimand 
MSS., letters of Hamilton, passim; also Rocheblave to Carleton, July 4. 
1778; and to Hamilton, April 12, 1778. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 299 

force would be needed to enable a resolute and capable leader 
to conquer at least the southern part of the country. It was 
impossible to raise such a body among the scantily garrisoned 
forted villages of Kentucky. The pioneers, though warlike 
and fond of fighting, were primarily settlers; their soldiering 
came in as a purely secondary occupation. They were not a 
band of mere adventurers, living by the sword and bent on 
nothing but conquest. They were a group of hard-working, 
hard-fighting freemen, who had come in with their wives and 
children to possess the land. They were obliged to use all their 
wit and courage to defend what they had already won without 
wasting their strength by grasping at that which lay beyond. 
The very conditions that enabled so small a number to make 
a permanent settlement forbade their trying unduly to extend 
its bounds. 

Clark knew he could get from among his fellow settlers 
some men peculiarly suited for his purpose, but he also real- 
ized that he would have to bring the body of his force from 
Virginia. Accordingly, he decided to lay the case before Pat- 
rick Henry, then governor of the State of which Kentucky 
was only a frontier county. 

On October i, 1777, he started from Harrodsburg,^ to go 
over the Wilderness Road. The brief entries of his diary 
for this trip are very interesting and sometimes very amusing. 
Before starting, he made a rather shrewd and thoroughly char- 
acteristic speculation in horse-flesh, buying a horse for twelve 
pounds, and then ''swapping" it with Isaac Shelby and getting 
ten pounds to boot. He evidently knew how to make a good 
bargain, and had the true backwoods passion for barter. He 
was detained a couple of days by that commonest of frontier 
mischances, his horses straying; a natural incident when the 
animals were simply turned loose on the range and looked up 
when required.^ He travelled in company with a large party 

^ In the earlier MSS. it is called sometimes Harrodstown and sometimes 
Harrodsburg; but from this time on the latter name is in general use. 
^ This, like so many other incidents in the every-day history of the old 



300 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of men, women, and children who, disheartened by the Indian 
ravages, were going back to the settlements. They marched 
from fifteen to twenty miles a day, driving beeves along for 
food. In addition, the scouts at different times killed three 
buffalo ^ and a few deer, so that they were not stinted for fresh 
meat. 

When they got out of the wilderness he parted from his 
companions and rode off alone. He now stayed at the settler's 
house that was nearest when night overtook him. At a large 
house, such as that of the Campbells, near Abingdon, he was 
of course welcomed to the best, and treated with a generous 
hospitality for which it would have been an insult to of¥er 
money in return. At the small cabins he paid his way; usually 
a shilling and threepence or a shilling and sixpence for break- 
fast, bed, and feed for the horse; but sometimes four or five 
shillings. He fell in with a Captain Campbell, with whom 
he journeyed a week, finding him "an agreeable companion." 
They had to wait over one stormy day at a little tavern, and 
probably whiled away the time by as much of a carouse as 
circumstances allowed; at any rate, Clark's share of the bill 
when he left was one pound four shillings." Finally, a month 
after leaving Harrodsburg, having travelled six hundred and 
twenty miles, he reached his father's house.^ 

After staying only a day at his old home, he set out for 
Williamsburg, where he was detained a fortnight before the 
State auditors would settle the accounts of the Kentucky militia, 
which he had brought with him. The two things which he 

pioneers, is among the ordinary experiences of the present sojourner in the 
far West. 

^ One at Rockcastle River, two at Cumberland Ford. 

^ The items of expense jotted down in the diary are curious. For a 
night's lodging and board they range from is. 3d. to i^s. In Williamsburg, 
the capital, they were for a fortnight £9 l8s. 

° Seventy miles beyond Charlottesville ; he gives an itinerary of his 
journey, making it six hundred and twenty miles in all, by the route he 
travelled. On the way he had his horse shod and bought a pair of shoes 
for himself ; apparently, he kept the rest of his backwoods apparel. He 
sold his gun for £15 and swapped horses again — this time giving £7 los. 
to boot. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 361 

deemed especially worthy of mention during this time were 
his purchase of a ticket in the State lottery, for three pounds, 
and his going to church on Sunday — the first chance he had 
had to do so during the year.^ He was overjoyed at the 
news of Burgoyne's surrender; and with a light heart he re- 
turned to his father's house, to get a glimpse of his people be- 
fore again plunging into the wilds. 

After a week's rest he went back to the capital, laid his 
plans before Patrick Henry, and urged their adoption with 
fiery enthusiasm.- Henry's ardent soul quickly caught flame; 
but the peril of sending an expedition to such a wild and dis- 
tant country was so great, and Virginia's resources were so 
exhausted, that he could do little beyond lending Clark the 
weight of his name and influence. The matter could not be 
laid before the Assembly, nor made public in any way; for 
the hazard would be increased tenfold if the strictest secrecy 
were not preserved. Finally, Henry authorized Clark to raise 
seven companies, each of fifty men, who were to act as militia 
and to be paid as such.^ He also advanced him the sum of 
twelve hundred pounds (presumably in depreciated paper), 
and gave him an order on the authorities at Pittsburgh for 
boats, supplies, and ammunition ; while three of the most prom- 
inent Virginia gentlemen * agreed in writing to do their best 
to induce the Virginia legislature to grant to each of the ad- 
venturers three hundred acres of the conquered land, if they 
were successful. He was likewise given the commission of 
colonel, with instructions to raise his men solely from the 

2 When his accounts were settled he immediately bought "a piece of 
cloth for a jacket; price £4 15s.; buttons, etc. 3s." 

* Clark has left a full MS. "Memoir" of the events of 1777, 1778, and 
1779. It was used extensively by Mann Butler, the first historian who gave 
the campaign its proper prominence, and is printed almost complete by 
Dillon, on pp. 1 15-167 of his "Indiana." It was written at the desire of 
Presidents Jefferson and Madison, and therefore some thirty or forty years 
after the events of which it speaks. Valuable though it is, as the narrative 
of the chief actor, it would be still more valuable had it been written 
earlier ; it undoubtedly contains some rather serious errors. 

' Henry's private letter of instructions, January 2, 1778. 

* Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe. 



302 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

frontier counties west of the Blue Ridge/ so as not to weaken 
the people of the seacoast region in their struggle against the 
British. 

Thus the whole burden of making ready the expedition was 
laid on Clark's shoulders. The hampered Virginian authori- 
ties were able to give him little beyond their good-will. He is 
rightfully entitled to the whole glory; the plan and execution 
were both his. It was an individual rather than a State or 
national enterprise. 

Governor Henry's open letter of instructions merely ordered 
Clark to go to the relief of Kentucky. He carried with him 
also the secret letters which bade him attack the Illinois region ; 
for he had decided to assail this first, because, if defeated, he 
would then be able to take refuge in the Spanish dominions 
beyond the Mississippi. H^e met with the utmost difficulty 
in raising men. Some were to be sent to him from the Hol- 
ston overland, to meet him in Kentucky; but a combination 
of accidents resulted in his getting only a dozen or so from this 
source.^ Around Pittsburgh the jealousy between the Vir- 
ginians and Pennsylvanians hampered him greatly. Moreover, 
many people were strongly opposed to sending any men to 
Kentucky at all, deeming the drain on their strength more 
serious than the value of the new land warranted; for they 
were too short-sighted rightly to estimate what the frontiers- 
men had really done. When he had finally raised his troops he 
was bothered by requests from the difi'erent forts to aid detach- 
ments of the local militia in expeditions against bands of 
marauding Indians. 

But Clark never for a moment wavered nor lost sight of 
his main object. He worked steadily on, heedless of difficulty 
and disappointment, and late in the spring at last got together 
four small companies of frontiersmen from the clearings and 

^ Butler, p. 48 ; but Henry's public instructions authorized Clark to raise 
his men in any county. 

^ Four companies were to be raised on the Holston ; but only one actually 
went to Kentucky ; and most of its members deserted when they found 
out about the true nature of the expedition. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 303 

the scattered hunters' camps. In May, 1778, he left the 
Redstone settlements, taking not only his troops — one hundred 
and fifty in all ^ — but also a considerable number of private 
adventucers and settlers with their families. He touched at 
Pittsburgh and Wheeling to get his stores. Then the flotilla 
of clumsy flatboats, manned by tall riflemen, rowed and drifted 
cautiously down the Ohio between the melancholy and unbroken 
reaches of Indian-haunted forest. The presence of the fam- 
ilies shows that even this expedition had the usual peculiar 
Western character of being undertaken half for conquest, half 
for settlement. 

He landed at the mouth of the Kentucky, but rightly con- 
cluded that as a starting-point against the British posts it 
would be better to choose a place farther west, so he drifted 
on down the stream, and on the 27th of May ^ reached the 
Falls of the Ohio, where the river broke into great rapids 
or riffles of swift water. This spot he chose, both because from 
it he could threaten and hold in check the different Indian 
tribes, and because he deemed it wise to have some fort to 
protect in the future the craft that might engage in the river 
trade, when they stopped to prepare for the passage of the 
rapids. Most of the families that had come with him had gone 
off to the interior of Kentucky, but several were left, and 
these settled on an island near the Falls, where they raised 
a crop of corn ; and in the autumn they moved to the mainland. 
On the site thus chosen by the clear-eyed frontier leader there 
afterward grew up a great city, named in honor of the French 
king, who was then our ally. Clark may fairly be called its 
founder.^ 

"^ Clark's letter to George Mason, November 19, 1779. Given in "Clark's 
Campaign in the Illinois" (Cincinnati, 1869), for the first time; one of 
Robert Clarke's excellent Ohio Valley Historical Scries. 

* This is the date given in the deposition, in the case of Floyd's heirs, in 
1815; see MSS. in Colonel Durrett's library at Louisville. Clark's dates, 
given from memory, are often a day or two out. His "Memoir" is of 
course less accurate than the letter to Mason. 

* It was named Louisville in 1780, but was long known only as the Falls. 
Many other men had previously recognized the advantages of the place ; 
hunters and surveyors had gone there, but Clark led thither the first per- 



304 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Here Clark received news of the alliance with France which 
he hoped would render easier his task of winning over the 
habitants of the Illinois. He was also joined by a few daring 
Kentuckians, including Kenton, and by the only Holstpn com- 
pany that had yet arrived. He now disclosed to his men the 
real object of his expedition. The Kentuckians, and those 
who had come down the river with him, hailed the adventure 
with eager enthusiasm, pledged him their hearty support, and 
followed him with stanch and unflinching loyalty. But the 
Holston recruits, who had not come under the spell of his 
personal influence, murmured against him. They had not 
reckoned on an expedition so long and so dangerous, and in 
the night most of them left the camp and fled into the woods. 
The Kentuckians, who had horses, pursued the deserters, with 
orders to kill any who resisted ; but all save six or eight escaped. 
Yet they suffered greatly for their crime, and endured every 
degree of hardship and fatigue, for the Kentuckians spurned 
them from the gates of the wooden forts, and would not for a 
long time suffer them to enter, hounding them back to the 
homes they had dishonored. They came from among a bold 
and adventurous people, and their action was due rather to 
wayward and sullen disregard of authority than to cowardice. 

When the pursuing horsemen came back, a day of mirth 
and rejoicing was spent between the troops who were to stay 
behind to guard Kentucky and those who were to go onward 
to conquer Illinois. On the 24th of June, Clark's boats put 
out from shore, and shot the Falls at the very moment that 
there was a great eclipse of the sun, at which the frontiers- 
men wondered greatly, but for the most part held it to be 
a good omen. 

Clark had weeded out all those whom he deemed unable to 

manent settlers. Conolly had laid out at the Falls a grant of two 
thousand acres, of which he afterward surrendered half. His grant, 
covering much of the present site of the city, was on July i. 1780, declared 
to be forfeited by a jury consisting of Daniel Boone and eleven other 
good men and true, empanelled by the sheriff of the county. See Durrctt 
MSS. in "Papers Relating to Louisville, Ky." 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 305 

stand fatigue and hardship; his four Httle companies were of 
picked men, each with a good captain.^ His equipment was as 
hght as that of an Indian war-party, for he knew better than 
to take a pound of baggage that could possibly be spared. 

He intended to land some three leagues below the entrance 
of the Tennessee River,^ thence to march on foot against the 
Illinois towns; for he feared discovery if he should attempt 
to ascend the Mississippi, the usual highway by which the 
fur traders went up to the quaint French hamlets that lay be- 
tween the Kaskaskia and the Illinois rivers. Accordingly, 
he double-manned his oars and rowed night and day until he 
reached a small island off the mouth of the Tennessee, where 
he halted to make his final preparations, and was there joined 
by a little party of American hunters, who had recently been 
in the French settlements.^ The meeting was most fortunate. 
The hunters entered eagerly into Clark's plans, joining him 
for the campaign, and they gave him some very valuable in- 
formation. They told him that the royal commandant was a 
Frenchman, Rocheblave, whose headquarters were at the town 
of Kaskaskia; that the fort was in good repair, the militia 
were well drilled and in constant readiness to repel attack, while 
spies were continually watching the Mississippi, and the In- 
dians and the coureiirs de hois were warned to be on the look- 
out for any American force. If the party were discovered in 
time the hunters believed that the French would undoubtedly 
gather together instantly to repel them, having been taught to 
hate and dread the backwoodsmen as more brutal and ter- 
rible than any Indians; and in such an event the strength of 
the works and the superiority of the French in numbers would 

^ The names of the four captains were John Montgomery, Joseph Bow- 
man, Leonard Helm, and William Harrod. Each company nominally con- 
sisted of fifty men, but none of them was of full strength. 

*At the old Fort Massac, then deserted. The name is taken from that 
of an old French commander; it is not a corruption of Fort Massacre, 
as has been asserted. 

^ In his "Memoir" he says "from the States" ; in his letter to Mason he 
calls them "Englishmen," probably to show that they were not French, 
as they had just come from Kaskaskia. He almost always spoke of the 
English proper as British. 



3o6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

render the attack very hazardous. But they thought that a 
surprise would enable Clark to do as he wished, and they 
undertook to guide him by the quickest and shortest route to 
the towns. 

Clark was rather pleased than otherwise to learn of the 
horror with which the French regarded the backwoodsmen. He 
thought it would render them more apt to be panic-struck when 
surprised, and also more likely to feel a strong revulsion of 
gratitude when they found that the Americans meant them 
well and not ill. Taking their new allies for guides, the little 
body of less than two hundred men started north across the 
wilderness, scouts being scattered out well ahead of them, both 
to kill game for their subsistence and to see that their march 
was not discovered by any straggling Frenchman or Indian. 
The first fifty miles led through tangled and pathless forest, 
the toil of travelling being very great. After that the work 
was less difficult as they got out among the prairies, but on 
these great level meadows they had to take extra precautions 
to avoid being seen. Once the chief guide got bewildered and 
lost himself: he could no longer tell the route, nor whither 
it was best to march. ^ The whole party was at once cast into 
the utmost confusion ; but Clark soon made the guide under- 
stand that he was himself in greater jeopardy than any one 
else, and would forfeit his life if he did not guide them straight. 
Not knowing the man, Clark thought he might be treacherous ; 
and, as he wrote an old friend, he was never in his life in 
such a rage as when he found his troops wandering at random 
in a country where, at any moment, they might blunder on 
several times their number of hostile Indians; while, if they 
were discovered by any one at all, the whole expedition was 
sure to miscarry. However, the guide proved to be faithful; 
after a couple of hours he found his bearings once more, and 
guided the party straight to their destination. 

* Even experienced woodsmen or plainsmen sometimes thus become lost 
or "turned around," if in a country of few landmarks, where they have 
rarely been before. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 307 

On the evening of the 4th of July ^ they reached the River 
Kaskaskia, within three miles of the town, which lay on 
the farther bank. They kept in the woods until after it grew 
dusk, and then marched silently to a little farm on the hither 
side of the river, a mile from the town. The family were taken 
prisoners, and from them Clark learned that some days before 
the townspeople had been alarmed at the rumor of a possible 
attack ; but that their suspicions had been lulled, and they were 
then off their guard. There were a great many men in the 
town, but almost all French, the Indians having for the most 
part left. The account proved correct. Rocheblave, the Creole 
commandant, was sincerely attached to the British interest. 
He had been much alarmed early in the year by the reports 
brought to him by Indians that the Americans were in Kentucky 
and elsewhere beyond the Alleghanies. He had written re- 
peatedly to Detroit, asking that regulars could be sent him, 
and that he might himself be replaced by a commandant of 
English birth; for, though the French were well disposed to- 
ward the Crown, they had been frightened by the reports of 
the ferocity of the backwoodsmen, and the Indians were fickle. 
In his letters he mentioned that the French were much more 
loyal than the men of English parentage. Hamilton found 
it impossible to send him reinforcements, however, and he was 
forced to do the best he could without them ; but he succeeded 
well in his endeavors to organize troops, as he found the 
Creole militia very willing to serve, and the Indians extremely 
anxious to attack the Americans.^ He had under his orders 
two or three times as many men as Clark, and he would cer- 
tainly have made a good fight if he had not been surprised. 

* So says Clark; and the Haldimand MSS. contain a letter of Roche- 
blave of July 4th. For these campaigns of 1778 I follow, where possible, 
Clark's letter to Mason as being nearly contemporary; his "Memoir," as 
given by Dillon, comes next in authority ; while Butler, who was very 
accurate and painstaking, also got hold of original information from men 
who had taken part in the expedition, or from their descendants, besides 
making full use of the "Memoir." 

^Haldimand MSS., Carleton to Hamilton, May 16, 1777; Rocheblave to 
Carleton, February 8, 1778; Rocheblave to Hamilton, April 12, 1778; 
Rocheblave to Carleton, July 4, 1778. 



3o8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

It was only Clark's audacity and the noiseless speed of his 
movements that gave him a chance of success, with the odds 
so heavily against him. 

Getting boats, the American leader ferried his men across 
the stream under cover of the darkness and in profound si- 
lence, the work occupying about two hours. He then ap- 
proached Kaskaskia under cover of the night, dividing his 
force into two divisions, one being spread out to surround 
the town so that none might escape, while he himself led the 
other up to the walls of the fort. 

Inside the fort the lights were lit, and through the windows 
came the sounds of violins. The officers of the post had given 
a ball, and the mirth-loving Creoles, young men and girls, 
were dancing and revelling within, while the sentinels had 
left their posts. One of his captives showed Clark a postern- 
gate by the riverside, and through this he entered the fort, 
having placed his men roundabout at the entrance. Advanc- 
ing to the great hall where the revel was held, he leaned si- 
lently with folded arms against the door-post, looking at the 
dancers. An Indian, lying on the floor of the entry, gazed 
intently on the stranger's face as the light from the torches 
within flickered across it, and suddenly sprang to his feet, 
uttering the unearthly war-whoop. Instantly the dancing ceased ; 
the women screamed, while the men ran toward the door. 
But Clark, standing unmoved and with unchanged face, grimly 
bade them continue their dancing, but to remember that they 
now danced under Virginia and not Great Britain.^ At the 
same time his men burst into the fort, and seized the French 
officers, including the commandant, Rocheblave.^ 

* "Memoir of Major E. Denny," by Wm. H. Denny, p. 217. In "Record 
of the Court of Upland and Military Journal of Major E. Denny," Phila- 
delphia, i860 (Historical Society of Pennsylvania). The story was told 
to Major Denny by Clark himself, some time in '87 or '88; in process of 
repetition it evidently became twisted, and, as related by Denny, there are 
some very manifest inaccuracies, but there seems no reason to reject it 
entirely. 

' It is worth noting that these Illinois French, and most of the Indians 
with whom the French fur traders came in contact, called the Americans 
"Bostonnais." (In fact, the fur traders have taught this name to the 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 309 

Immediately, Clark had every street secured, and sent run- 
ners through the town ordering the people to keep close to 
their houses on pain of death; and by daylight he had them 
all disarmed. The backwoodsmen patrolled the town in little 
squads, while the French in silent terror cowered within their 
low-roofed houses. Clark was quite willing that they should 
fear the worst ; and their panic was very great. The unlooked- 
for and mysterious approach and sudden onslaught of the 
backwoodsmen, their wild and uncouth appearance, and the 
ominous silence of their commander, all combined to fill the 
French with fearful forebodings for their future fate.^ 

Next morning a deputation of the chief men waited upon 
Clark; and, thinking themselves in the hands of mere brutal 
barbarians, all they dared to do was to beg for their lives, 
w^hich they did, says Clark, "with the greatest servancy [say- 
ing] they were willing to be slaves to save their families," 
though the bolder spirits could not refrain from cursing their 
fortune that they had not been warned in time to defend them- 
selves. Now came Clark's chance for his winning stroke. He 
knew it was hopeless to expect his little band permanently to 
hold down a much more numerous hostile population, that 
was closely allied to many surrounding tribes of warlike In- 
dians ; he wished above all things to convert the inhabitants 
into ardent adherents of the American Government. 

So he explained at length that, though the Americans came 
as conquerors, who by the laws of war could treat the defeated 
as they wished, yet it was ever their principle to free, not to 

Northern tribes right across to the Pacific. While hunting- in the Selkirk 
Mountains last fall, the Kootenai Indian who was with me always de- 
scribed me as a "Boston man.") Similarly, the Indians round the upper 
Ohio and thence southward often called the backwoodsmen "Virginians." 
In each case the French and Indians adopted the name of their leading 
and most inveterate enemies as the title by which to call all of them. 

* In his "Memoir" Clark dwells at length on the artifices by which he 
heightened the terror of the French ; and Butler enlarges still further 
upon them. I follow the letter to Mason, which is much safer authority, 
the writer having then no thought of trying to increase the dramatic effect 
of the situation — which, in Butler, and indeed in the "Memoir" also, is 
strained till it comes dangerously near bathos. 



3IO THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

enslave, the people with whom they came in contact. If the 
French chose to become loyal citizens, and to take the oath 
of fidelity to the Republic, they should be welcomed to all the 
privileges of Americans ; those who did not so choose should 
be allowed to depart from the land in peace with their families. 

The mercurial Creoles who listened to his speech passed 
rapidly from the depth of despair to the height of joy. Instead 
of bewailing their fate they now could not congratulate them- 
selves enough on their good fortune. The crowning touch to 
their happiness was given by Clark when he told the priest, 
Pierre Gibault, in answer to a question as to whether the 
Catholic Church could be opened, that an American com- 
mander had nothing to do with any church save to defend it 
from insult, and that by the laws of the Republic his religion 
had as great privileges as any other. With that they all re- 
turned in noisy joy to their families, while the priest, a man 
of ability and influence, became thenceforth a devoted and 
effective champion of the American cause. The only person 
whom Clark treated harshly was M. Rocheblave, the com- 
mandant, who, when asked to dinner, responded in very in- 
sulting terms. Thereupon Clark promptly sent him as a pris- 
oner to Virginia (where he broke his parole and escaped), and 
sold his slaves for five hundred pounds, which was distributed 
among the troops as prize-money. 

A small detachment of the Americans, accompanied by a 
volunteer company of French militia, at once marched rapidly 
on Cahokia. The account of what had happened in Kaskaskia, 
and the news of the alliance between France and America, and 
the enthusiastic advocacy of Clark's new friends, soon con- 
verted Cahokia; and all of its inhabitants, like those of Kas- 
kaskia, took the oath of allegiance to America. Almost at the 
same time the priest Gibault volunteered to go, with a few of 
his compatriots, to Vincennes, and there endeavor to get the 
people to join the Americans, as being their natural friends 
and allies. He started on his mission at once, and on the ist 
of August returned to Clark with the news that he had been 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 311 

completely successful, that the entire population, after having 
gathered in the church to hear him, had taken the oath of 
allegiance, and that the American flag floated over their fort.^ 
No garrison could be spared to go to Vincennes; so one of 
the captains ^ was sent thither alone to take command. 

The priest Gibault had given convincing proof of his loy- 
alty. He remarked to Clark rather dryly that he had, properly 
speaking, nothing to do with the temporal affairs of his flock, 
but that now and then he was able to give them such hints in 
a spiritual way as would tend to increase their devotion to their 
new friends, 

Clark now found himself in a position of the utmost diffi- 
culty. With a handful of unruly backwoodsmen, imperfectly 
disciplined and kept under control only by his own personal 
influence, he had to protect and govern a region as large as 
any European kingdom. Moreover, he had to keep content 
and lo3^al a population of alien race, creed, and language, while 
he held his own against the British and against numerous 
tribes of Indians, deeply embittered against all Americans and 
as bloodthirsty and treacherous as they were warlike. It may 
be doubted if there was another man in the West who possessed 
the daring and resolution, the tact, energy, and executive ability 
necessary for the solution of so knotty a series of problems. 

He was hundreds of miles from the nearest post containing 
any American troops ; he was still farther from the seat of gov- 
ernment. He had no hope whatever of getting reinforcements 
or even advice and instruction for many months, probably not 
for a year; and he was thrown entirely on his own resources 
and obliged to act in every respect purely on his own respon- 
sibility. 

Governor Patrick Henry, although leaving everything in the 
last resort to Clark's discretion, had evidently been very doubt- 
ful whether a permanent occupation of the territory was feas- 

^ Judge John Law's "Address on the Colonial History of Vincennes," 
P- 25. 

* Leonard Helm. 



312 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ible/ though both he, and especially Jefferson, recognized the 
important bearing that its acquisition would have upon the 
settlement of the northwestern boundary when the time came 
to treat for peace. Probably Glark himself had not at first 
appreciated all the possibilities that lay within his conquest, 
but he was fully alive to them now and saw that, provided 
he could hold on to it, he had added a vast and fertile territory 
to the domain of the Union. To the task of keeping it he now 
bent all his energies. 

The time of service of his troops had expired, and they 
were anxious to go home. By presents and promises he man- 
aged to enlist one hundred of them for eight months longer. 
Then, to color his staying with so few men, he made a feint 
of returning to the Falls, alleging as a reason his entire confi- 
dence in the loyalty of his French friends and his trust in 
their capacity to defend themselves. He hoped that this would 
bring out a remonstrance from the inhabitants, who, by be- 
coming American citizens, had definitely committed themselves 
against the British. The result was such as he expected. On 
the rumor of his departure, the inhabitants in great alarm 
urged him to stay, saying that otherwise the British would 
surely take the post. He made a show of reluctantly yielding 
to their request, and consented to stay with two companies; 
and then, finding that many of the more adventurous young 
Creoles were anxious to take service, he enlisted enough of them 
to fill up all four companies to their original strength. His 
whole leisure was spent in drilling the men, Americans and 
French alike, and in a short time he turned them into as or- 

^ In his secret letter of instructions he orders Clark to be especially 
careful to secure the artillery and military stores at Kaskaskia, laying such 
stress upon this as to show that he regarded the place itself as of com- 
paratively little value. In fact, all Henry's order contemplated w^as an 
attack on "the British post at Kaskasky." However, he adds, that if the 
French are willing to become American citizens, they shall be fully pro- 
tected against their foes. The letter earnestly commands Clark to treat 
not only the inhabitants, but also all British prisoners, with the utmost 
humanity. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 313 

derly and well-disciplined a body as could be found in any gar- 
rison of regulars. 

He also established very friendly relations with the Spanish 
captains of the scattered Creole villages across the Mississippi, 
for the Spaniards were very hostile to the British, and had 
not yet begun to realize that they had even more to dread from 
the Americans. Clark has recorded his frank surprise at find- 
ing the Spanish commandant, who lived at St. Louis, a very 
pleasant and easy companion, instead of haughty and reserved, 
as he had supposed all Spaniards were. 

The most difficult, and among the most important, of his 
tasks was dealing with the swarm of fickle and treacherous 
savage tribes that surrounded him. They had hitherto been 
hostile to the Americans ; but being great friends of the Span- 
iards and French they were much confused by the change in 
the sentiments of the latter, and by the sudden turn affairs had 
taken. 

Some volunteers — Americans, French, and friendly Indians 
— were sent to the aid of the American captain at Vincennes, 
and the latter, by threats and promises, and a mixture of dip- 
lomatic speechmaking with a show of force, contrived, for 
the time being, to pacify the immediately neighboring tribes. 

Clark took upon himself the greater task of dealing with 
a huge horde of savages, representing every tribe between the 
Great Lakes and the Mississippi, who had come to the Illinois, 
some from a distance of five hundred miles, to learn accurately 
all that had happened, and to hear for themselves what the Long 
Knives had to say. They gathered to meet him at Cahokia, 
chiefs and warriors of every grade; among them were Otta- 
was and Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Sacs, and Foxes, and 
others belonging to tribes whose very names have perished. 
The straggling streets of the dismayed little town were thronged 
with many hundreds of dark-browed, sullen-looking savages, 
grotesque in look and terrible in possibility. They strutted to 
and fro in their dirty finery, or lounged round the houses, in- 
quisitive, importunate, and insolent, hardly concealing a lust 



314 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

for bloodshed and plunder that the slightest mishap was certain 
to render ungovernable. 

Fortunately, Clark knew exactly how to treat them. He 
thoroughly understood their natures, and was always on his 
guard, while seemingly perfectly confident; and he combined 
conciliation with firmness and decision, and above all with 
prompt rapidity of action. 

For the first two or three days no conclusion was reached, 
though there was plenty of speechmaking. But on the night 
of the third a party of turbulent warriors ^ endeavored to force 
their way into the house where he was lodging, and to carry 
him off. Clark, who, as he records, had been "under some 
apprehensions among such a numbers of Devils," was antici- 
pating treachery. His guards were at hand, and promptly 
seized the savages; while the townspeople took the alarm and 
were under arms in a couple of minutes, thus convincing the 
Indians that their friendship for the Americans was not 
feigned. 

Clark instantly ordered the French militia to put the cap- 
tives, both chiefs and warriors, in irons. He had treated the 
Indians well, and had not angered them by the harshness and 
brutality that so often made them side against the English or 
Americans and in favor of the French; but he knew that any 
signs of timidity would be fatal. His boldness and decision 
were crowned with complete success. The crestfallen prisoners 
humbly protested that they were only trying to find out if 
the French were really friendly to Clark, and begged that 
they might be released. He answered with haughty indiffer- 
ence, and refused to release them, even when the chiefs of the 
other tribes came up to intercede. Indians and whites alike 
were in the utmost confusion, every man distrusting what the 
moment might bring forth. Clark continued seemingly wholly 
unmoved, and did not even shift his lodgings to the fort, 
remaining in a house in the town, but he took good care to 
secretly fill a large room adjoining his own with armed men, 
^ "A party of Puans and otliers." — Clark's letter to Mason. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 315 

while the guards were kept ready for instant action. To make 
his show of indifference complete, he "assembled a Number 
of Gentlemen and Ladies and danced nearly the whole night." 
The perplexed savages, on the other hand, spent the hours of 
darkness in a series of councils among themselves. 

Next morning he summoned all the tribes to a grand coun- 
cil, releasing the captive chiefs, that he might speak to them 
in the presence of their friends and allies. The preliminary 
ceremonies were carefully executed in accordance with the rigid 
Indian etiquette. Then Clark stood up in the midst of the 
rings of squatted warriors, while his riflemen clustered behind 
him in their tasselled hunting-shirts, travel-torn and weather- 
beaten. He produced the bloody war-belt of wampum, and 
handed it to the chiefs whom he had taken captive, telling the 
assembled tribes that he scorned alike their treachery and their 
hostility ; that he would be thoroughly justified in putting them 
to death, but that instead he would have them escorted safely 
from the town, and after three days would begin war upon 
them. He warned them that if they did not wish their own 
women and children massacred, they must stop killing those 
of the Americans. Pointing to the war-belt, he challenged 
them, on behalf of his people, to see which would make it 
the most bloody; and he finished by telling them that while 
they stayed in his camp they should be given food and strong 
drink,^ and that now he had ended his talk to them, and he 
wished them to speedily depart. 

Not only the prisoners, but all the other chiefs in turn forth- 
with rose, and in language of dignified submission protested 

^ "Provisions and Rum." — LeUer to Mason. This is much the best 
authority for these proceedings. The "Memoir," written by an old man 
who had squandered his energies and sunk into deserved obscurity, is 
tedious and magniloquent, and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, Dillon 
has not always chosen the extracts judiciously. Clark's decidedly prolix 
speeches to the Indians are given with intolerable repetition. They were 
well suited to the savages, drawing the causes of the quarrel between the 
British and Americans in phrases that could be understood by the Indian 
mind ; but their inflated hyperbole is not now interesting. They describe 
the Americans as lighting a great council-fire, sharpening tomahawks, 
striking the war-post, declining to give "two bucks for a blanket," as the 



3i6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

their regret at having been led astray by the British, and their 
determination thenceforth to be friendly with the Americans. 

In response, Clark again told them that he came not as a 
counsellor but as a warrior, not begging for a truce but carry- 
ing in his right hand peace and in his left hand war; save only 
that to a few of their worst men he intended to grant no 
terms whatever. To those who were friendly he, too, would 
be a friend, but if they chose war, he would call from the 
Thirteen Council-Fires ^ warriors so numerous that they would 
darken the land, and from that time on the red people would 
hear no sound but that of the birds that lived on blood. He 
went on to tell them that there had been a mist before their eyes, 
but that he would clear away the cloud and would show them 
the right of the quarrel between the Long Knives and the 
king who dwelt across the great sea; and then he told them 
about the revolt in terms which would almost have applied to a 
rising of Hurons or Wyandots against the Iroquois. At the end 
of this speech he offered them the two belts of peace and war. 

They eagerly took the peace-belt, but he declined to smoke 
the calumet, and told them he would not enter into the solemn 
ceremonies of the peace treaty with them until the following 
day. He likewise declined to release all his prisoners, and in- 
sisted that two of them should be put to death. They even 
yielded to this, and surrendered to him two young men, who 
advanced and sat down before him on the floor, covering their 
heads with their blankets, to receive the tomahawk.- Then 

British wanted them to, etc. ; with incessant allusions to the Great Spirit 
being angry, the roads being made smooth, refusing to listen to the bad 
birds who flew through the woods, and the like. Occasional passages 
are fine; but it all belongs to the study of Indians and Indian oratory, 
rather than to the history of the Americans. 

2 In his speeches, as in those of his successors in treaty-making, the 
United States were sometimes spoken of as the Thirteen Fires, and some- 
times as the Great Fire. 

' I have followed the contemporary letter to Mason rather than the more 
elaborate and slightly different account of tlie "Memoir." The account 
written by Clark in his old age, like Shelby's similar autobiography, is, 
in many respects, not very trustworthy. It cannot be accepted for a 
moment where it conflicts with any contemporary accounts. 



CONQUEST OF THE ILLINOIS 317 

he granted them full peace and forgave the young men their 
doom, and the next day, after the peace council, there was 
a feast, and the friendship of the Indians was won. Clark 
ever after had great influence over them; they admired his 
personal prowess, his oratory, his address as a treaty-maker, 
and the skill with which he led his troops. Long afterward, 
when the United States authorities were endeavoring to make 
treaties with the red men, it was noticed that the latter would 
never speak to any other white general or commissioner while 
Clark was present. 

After this treaty there was peace in the Illinois country; 
the Indians remained for some time friendly, and the French 
were kept well satisfied. 



NOTE 

(The following account of the first negotiations of the Americans with 
the Indians near Vincennes is curious as being the report of one of the 
Indians ; but it was evidently colored to suit his hearer, for as a matter 
of fact the Indians of the Wabash were for the time being awed into 
quiet, the Piankeshaws sided with the Americans, and none of them dared 
rise until the British approached.) 

(Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 219.) 

Proceedings of the Rebels at St. Vincennes as related to Lieut. Govr. 
Hamilton by Neegik an Ottawa War Chief sent forward to gain intelli- 
gence. Camp at Rocher de Bout 14th Octr. 1778 — 

On the Rebels first arrival at St. Vincennes they took down the Eng- 
lish Flag left there by Lieut. Gen. Abbott, wrapped a large stone in it, 
and threw it into the Ouabash, saying to the Indians, thus we mean to 
treat your Father — 

Having called the Indians together they laid a War Belt colored red, 
& a belt colored green before them, telling them that if they delighted 
in mischief and had no compassion on their wives & children they might 
take up the red one, if on the contrary they were wise & preferred 
peace, the green one — 

The old Tobacco a chief of the [Piankeshaws] spoke as follows — 
My brothers — you speak in a manner not to be understood, I never yet 
saw, nor have I heard from my ancestors that it was customary to place 
good & bad things in the same dish — You talk to us as if you meant us 
well, yet you speak of War & peace in the same minute, thus I treat 



3i8 



THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



the speeches of such men — on which with a violent kick he spurned 
their belts from him. 

The son of Lagesse, a young Chief of the Pontconattamis of St. 
Joseph spoke next to them. 

My brothers — 'Tis because I have listened to the voice of our old 
men, & because I have regard to our women & children that I have not 
before now struck my Tomahawk into some of your heads — attend to 
what I say, I will only go to see in what condition our wives & children 
are [meaning, I will first place them in security] and then you may 
depend on seeing me again — 

The Rebel speaker then said — 

You are young men & your youth excuses your ignorances, you would 
not else talk as you do — Our design is to march thro' your country, & 
if we find any fires in our way, we shall just tread them out as we walk 
along & if we meet with any obstacle or barrier we shall remove it with 
all ease, but the bystanders must take care lest the splinters should scar 
their faces. 

We shall then proceed to Detroit where your father is whom we 
consider as a Hog put to fatten in a penn, we shall enclose him in his 
penn, till he be fat, & then we will throw him into the river — We shall 
draw a reinforcement from the Falls on the Ohio & from thence & the 
Illinois send six hundred men to Chicagou — 

To this the Indians replied — You that are so brave, what need have 
you to be reinforced, go to Detroit, you that can put out our fires & so 
easyly remove our barriers. — This we say to you, take care that in 
attempting to extinguish our fires you do not burn yourselves. & that 
in breaking down our barriers you do not run splinters into your hands. 
You may also expect that we shall not suffer a single Frenchman to 
accompany you to Detroit. 

End of the Conference. 



CHAPTER XV 

CLARK'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 

1779 

HAMILTON, at Detroit, had been so encouraged by 
the successes of his war-parties, that, in 1778, he 
began to plan an attack on Fort Pitt;^ but his plans 
were forestalled by Clark's movements, and he, of course, 
abandoned them when the astounding news reached him that 
the rebels had themselves invaded the Illinois country, cap- 
tured the British commandant, Rocheblave, and administered 
to the inhabitants the oath of allegiance to Congress.- Shortly 
afterward, he learned that Vincennes likewise was in the 
hands of the Americans. 

He was a man of great energy, and he immediately began 
to prepare an expedition for the reconquest of the country, 
French emissaries who were loyal to the British Crown were 
sent to the Wabash to stir up the Indians against the Amer- 
icans; and though the Piankeshaws remained friendly to the 
latter, the Kickapoos and Weas, who were more powerful, 
announced their readiness to espouse the British cause if 
they received support, while the neighboring Miamis were 
already on the war-path. The commandants at the small posts 
of Mackinaw and St. Josephs were also notified to incite the 
Lake Indians to harass the Illinois country.^ 

He led the main body in person, and throughout Septem- 
ber every soul in Detroit was busy from morning till night in 
mending boats, baking biscuit, packing provisions in kegs 

^Haldimand MSS. Hamilton to Carleton, January, 1778. 

'Ibid. Hamilton's letter of August 8th. 

'Ibid. Hamilton to Haldimand, September 17, 1778. 

319 



320 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and bags, preparing artillery stores, and in every way making 
ready for the expedition. Fifteen large bateaux and pirogues 
were procured, each capable of carrying from eighteen hun- 
dred to three thousand pounds; these were to carry the am- 
munition, food, clothing, tents, and especially the presents 
for the Indians. Cattle and wheels were sent ahead to the 
most important portages on the route that would be traversed ; 
a six-pounder gun was also forwarded. Hamilton had been 
deeply exasperated by what he regarded as the treachery of 
most of the Illinois and Wabash Creoles in joining the Amer- 
icans; but he was in high spirits and very confident of success. 
He wrote to his superior officer that the British were sure 
to succeed if they acted promptly, for the Indians were fa- 
vorable to them, knowing they alone could give them supplies ; 
and he added "the Spaniards are feeble and hated by the 
French, the French are fickle and have no man of capacity 
to advise or lead them, and the Rebels are enterprising and 
brave, but want resources." The bulk of the Detroit French, 
including all their leaders, remained stanch supporters of 
the Crown, and the militia eagerly volunteered to go on the 
expedition. Feasts were held with the Ottawas, Chippewas, 
and Pottawatomies, at which oxen were roasted whole, while 
Hamilton and the chiefs of the French rangers sang the 
war-song in solemn council, and received pledges of armed 
assistance and support from the savages.^ 

On October 7th, the expedition left Detroit; before start- 
ing the venerable Jesuit missionary gave the Catholic French 
who went along his solemn blessing and approval, condition- 
ally upon their strictly keeping the oath they had taken to 
be loyal and obedient servants of the Crown.^ It is worthy 
of note that, while the priest at Kaskaskia proved so potent 
an ally of the Americans, the priest at Detroit was one of 

^ Haldimand MSS. Hamilton to Haldimand. September 23, October 3, 
1778. 

'Ibid., Series B, vol. CXXIII, p. 53. Hamilton's letter of July 6, 1781, 
containinf? a "brief account" of the whole expedition, taken from what he 
calls a "diary of transactions" that he had preserved. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 321 

the stanchest supporters of the British. Hamilton started with 
thirty-six British regulars, under two lieutenants, forty-five 
Detroit volunteers (chiefly French), who had been carefully 
drilled for over a year, under Captain Lamothe; seventy-nine 
Detroit militia, under a major and two captains ; and seven- 
teen members of the Indian Department (including three cap- 
tains and four lieutenants) who acted with the Indians. 
There were thus in all one hundred and seventy-seven whites.^ 
Sixty Indians started with the troops from Detroit, but so 
many bands joined him on the route that when he reached 
Vincennes his entire force amounted to five hundred men.- 

Having embarked, the troops and Indians paddled down- 
stream to Lake Erie, reaching it in a snow-storm, and when 
a lull came they struck boldly across the lake, making what 
bateau men call a "traverse" of thirty-six miles to the mouth 
of the Maumee. Darkness overtook them while still on 
the lake, and the head boats hung out lights for the guidance 
of those astern ; but about midnight a gale came up, and 
the whole flotilla was nearly swamped, being beached with 
great difficulty on an oozy flat close to the mouth of the 
Maumee. The waters of the Maumee were low, and the boats 
were poled slowly up against the current, reaching the portage 
point, where there was a large Indian village, on the 24th of 
the month. Here a nine miles' carry was made to one of 
the sources of the Wabash, called by the voyageurs "la petite 
rimere." This stream was so low that the boats could not 
have gone down it had it not been for a beaver dam four 
miles below the landing-place, which backed up the current. 
An opening was made in the dam to let the boats pass. The 
traders and Indians thoroughly appreciated the help given 

2 Haldiman MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 253, return of forces on 
December 24th. 

'^ Ibid. Hamilton's letter of July 6, 1781, the "brief account." Clark's 
estimate was very close to the truth ; he gave Hamilton six hundred men, 
four hundred of them Indians. See State Department MSS., No. 71, 
vol. I, p. 247. Papers Continental Congress. Letter of G. R. Clark to 
Governor Henry, April 29, 1779. This letter was written seven months 
before that to Mason, and many years before the "Memoir," so I have, 
where possible, followed it as being better authority than either. 



322 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

them at this difficult part of the course by the engineering 
skill of the beavers — for Hamilton was following the regular 
route of the hunting, trading, and war parties — and none of 
the beavers of this particular dam were ever molested, being 
left to keep their dam in order, and repair it, which they al- 
ways speedily did whenever it was damaged.-^ 

It proved as difficult to go down the Wabash as to get up 
the Maumee. The water was shallow, and once or twice in 
great swamps dikes had to be built that the boats might be 
floated across. Frost set in heavily, and the ice cut the 
men as they worked in the water to haul the boats over shoals 
or rocks. The bateaux often needed to be beached and calked, 
while both whites and Indians had to help carry the loads 
round the shoal places. At every Indian village it was nec- 
essary to stop, hold a conference, and give presents. At 
last the Wea village — or Ouiatanon, as Hamilton called it — 
was reached. Here the Wabash chiefs, who had made peace 
with the Americans, promptly came in and tendered their 
allegiance to the British, and a reconnoitring party seized a 
lieutenant and three men of the Vincennes militia, who were 
themselves on a scouting expedition, but who nevertheless 
were surprised and captured without difficulty.- They had 
been sent out by Captain Leonard Helm, then acting as com- 
mandant at Vincennes. He had but a couple of Americans 
with him, and was forced to trust to the Creole militia, who 
had all embodied themselves with great eagerness, having 
taken the oath of allegiance to Congress. Having heard ru- 
mors of the British advance, he had despatched a little party 
to keep watch, and in consequence of their capture he was 
taken by surprise. 

From Ouiatanon Hamilton despatched Indian parties to 
surround Vincennes and intercept any messages sent either 
to the Falls or to the Illinois; they were completely success- 

* Haldimand MSS. Hamilton's "brief account." 

'Ibid. The French officer had in his pocket one British and one Ameri- 
can commission; Hamilton debated in his mind for some time the advisability 
of hanging him. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 323 

ful, capturing a messenger who carried a hurried note written 
by Helm to Clark to announce what had happened. An ad- 
vance-guard, under Major Hay, was sent forward to take 
possession, but Helm showed so good a front that nothing 
was attempted until the next day, the 17th of December, just 
seventy-one days after the expedition had left Detroit, when 
Hamilton came up at the head of his whole force and entered 
Vincennes. Poor Helm was promptly deserted by all the 
Creole militia. The latter had been loud in their boasts until 
the enemy came in view, but as soon as they caught sight 
of the redcoats they began to slip away and run up to the 
British to surrender their arms.^ He was finally left with 
only one or two men, Americans. Nevertheless, he refused 
the first summons to surrender; but Hamilton, who knew 
that Helm's troops had deserted him, marched up to the fort 
at the head of his soldiers, and the Americans were obliged 
to surrender, with no terms granted save that he and his 
associates should be treated with humanity.^ The instant 
the fort was surrendered the Indians broke in and plundered 
it; but they committed no act of cruelty, and only plundered 
a single private house. 

The French inhabitants had shown pretty clearly that they 
did not take a keen interest in the struggle, on either side. 
They were now summoned to the church and offered the 
chance — which they for the most part eagerly embraced — of 
purging themselves of their past misconduct by taking a most 
humiliating oath of repentance, acknowledging that they had 

^Ibid. Intercepted letter of Captain Helm, Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 280. 

''Ibid. Letter of Hamilton, Dec. 18-30, 1778. The story of Helm's 
marching out with the honors of war is apparently a mere invention. 
Even Mann Butler, usually so careful, permits himself to be led off into 
all sorts of errors when describing the incidents of the Illinois and Vin- 
cennes expeditions, and the writers who have followed him have generally 
been less accurate. The story of Helm drinking toddy by the fireplace 
when Clark retook the fort, and of the latter ordering riflemen to fire at 
the chimney, so as to knock the mortar into the toddy, may safely be set 
down as pure — and very weak — fiction. When Clark wrote his memoirs, 
in his old age, het took delight in writing down among his exploits all sorts 
of childish stratagems ; the marvel is that any sane historian should not 
have seen that these were on their face as untrue as they were ridiculous. 



324 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

sinned against God and man by siding with the rebels, and 
promising to be loyal in the future. Two hundred and fifty 
of the militia, being given back their arms, appeared with 
their officers, and took service again under the British king, 
swearing a solemn oath of allegiance. They certainly showed 
throughout the most light-hearted indifference to chronic per- 
jury and treachery; nor did they in other respects appear to 
very good advantage. Clark was not in the least surprised 
at the news of their conduct; for he had all along realized that 
the attachment of the French would prove but a slender reed 
on which to lean in the moment of trial. 

Hamilton had no fear of the inhabitants themselves, for 
the fort completely commanded the town. To keep them in 
good order he confiscated all their spirituous liquors, and in 
a rather amusing burst of Puritan feeling destroyed two 
billiard-tables, which he announced were ''sources of im- 
morality and dissipation in such a settlement." ^ He had no 
idea that he was in danger of attack from without, for his 
spies brought him word that Clark had only a hundred and 
ten men in the Illinois country ;- and the route between was 
in winter one of extraordinary difficulty. 

He had five hundred men and Clark but little over one 
hundred. He was not only far nearer his base of supplies 
and reinforcements at Detroit than Clark was to his at Fort 
Pitt, but he was also actually across Clark's line of com- 
munications. Had he pushed forward at once to attack the 
Americans, and had he been able to overcome the difficulties 
of the march, he would almost certainly have conquered. But 
he was daunted by the immense risk and danger of the move- 
ment. The way was long and the country flooded, and he 
feared the journey might occupy so much time that his stock 
of provisions would be exhausted before he got halfway. In 
such a case the party might starve to death or perish from 
exposure. Besides, he did not know what he should do 

2Haldimand MSS. Letter of Hamilton, Dec. 18-30, 1778. 
^ Ibid. "Fourscore at Kaskaskia and thirty at Cahokia." 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 325 

for carriages; and he dreaded the rigor of the winter weather.^ 
There were undoubtedly appaUing difficulties in the way of 
a midwinter march and attack; and the fact that Clark at- 
tempted and performed the feat which Hamilton dared not 
try, marks just the difference between a man of genius and 
a good, brave, ordinary commander. 

Having decided to suspend active operations during the 
cold weather, he allowed the Indians to scatter back to their 
villages for the winter, and sent most of the Detroit militia 
home, retaining in the garrison only thirty-four British reg- 
ulars, forty French volunteers, and a dozen white leaders 
of the Indians ; - in all, eighty or ninety whites, and a prob- 
ably larger number of red auxiliaries. The latter were continu- 
ally kept out on scouting expeditions ; Miamis and Shawnees 
wiere sent down to watch the Ohio, and take scalps in the 
settlements, while the bands of Kickapoos, the most warlike 
of the Wabash Indians, and of Ottawas, often accompanied 
by French partisans, went toward the Illinois country.^ Ham- 
ilton intended to undertake a formidable campaign in the 
spring. He had sent messages to Stuart, the British Indian 
agent in the south, directing him to give war-belts to the 
Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, that a combined attack 
on the frontier might take place as soon as the weather 
opened. He himself was to be joined by reinforcements from 
Detroit, while the Indians were to gather round him as soon 
as the winter broke. He would then have had probably over 
a thousand men, and light cannon with which to batter down 
the stockades. He rightly judged that with this force he 
could not only reconquer the Illinois, but also sweep Ken- 
tucky, where the outnumbered riflemen could not have met 
him in the field, nor the wooden forts have withstood his 
artillery. Undoubtedly he would have carried out his plan, 
and have destroyed all the settlements west of the Alle- 

^ Ibid. In his various letters Hamilton sets forth the difficulties at length. 
''Ibid. Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 287. Return of Vincennes garrison for 
January 30, 1779. 
^ Ibid. Hamilton's "brief account," and his letter of December i8th. 



326 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ghanies, had he been allowed to wait until the mild weather 
brought him his hosts of Indian alHes and his reinforcements 
of regulars and militia from Detroit. 

But in Clark he had an antagonist whose far-sighted dar- 
ing and indomitable energy raised him head and shoulders 
above every other frontier leader. This backwoods colonel 
was perhaps the one man able in such a crisis to keep the 
land his people had gained. When the news of the loss of 
Vincennes reached the Illinois town, and especially when 
there followed a rumor that Hamilton himself was on his 
march thither to attack them/ the panic became tremendous 
among the French. They frankly announced that though 
they much preferred the Americans, yet it would be folly 
to oppose armed resistance to the British ; and one or two 
of their number were found to be in communication with 
Hamilton and the Detroit authorities. Clark promptly made 
ready for resistance, tearing down the buildings near the 
fort at Kaskaskia — his headquarters — and sending out scouts 
and runners ; but he knew that it was hopeless to try to with- 
stand such a force as Hamilton could gather. He narrowly 
escaped being taken prisoner by a party of Ottawas and 
Canadians, who had come from Vincennes early in January, 
when the weather was severe and the travelling fairly good.^ 
He was at the time on his way to Cahokio, to arrange for the 
defense ; several of the wealthier Frenchmen were with him 
in "chairs" — presumably creaking wooden carts — and one 
of them "swampt," or mired down, only a hundred yards 
from the ambush. Clark and his guards were so on the alert 
that no attack was made. 

In the midst of his doubt and uncertainty he received some 
news that enabled him immediately to decide on the proper 
course to follow. He had secured great influence over the 

*The rumor came when Clark was attending a dance given by the people 
of the little village of La Prairie du Rocher. The Creoles were passion- 
ately fond of dancing, and the Kentuckians entered into the amusement 
with the utmost zest. 

^Haldimand MSS. Hamilton's letter, January 24, 1779. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 327 

bolder, and therefore the leading, spirits among the French. 
One of these was a certain Francis Vigo, a trader in St. 
Louis. He was by birth an Italian, who had come to New 
Orleans in a Spanish regiment, and having procured his 
discharge, had drifted to the Creole villages of the frontier, 
being fascinated by the profitable adventures of the Indian 
trade. Journeying to Vincennes, he was thrown into prison 
by Hamilton; on being released, he returned to St. Louis, 
Thence he instantly crossed over to Kaskaskia, on January 27. 
1779,^ and told Clark that Hamilton had at the time only 
eighty men in garrison, with three pieces of cannon and some 
swivels mounted, but that as soon as the winter broke, he 
intended to gather a very large force and take the offensive.^ 

Clark instantly decided to forestall his foe, and to make 
the attack himself, heedless of the almost impassable nature 
of the ground and of the icy severity of the weather. Not 
only had he received no reinforcements from Virginia, but he 
had not had so much as a "scrip of a pen" from Governor 
Henry since he had left him, nearly twelve months before.^ 
So he was forced to trust entirely to his own energy and 
power. He first equipped a row-galley with two four-pound- 
ers and four swivels, and sent her off with a crew of forty 
men, having named her the Willing} She was to patrol 
the Ohio, and then to station herself in the Wabash so as 
to stop all boats from descending it. She was the first gun- 
boat ever afloat on the Western waters. 

Then he hastily drew together his little garrisons of back- 
woodsmen from the French towns, and prepared for the 
march overland against Vincennes. His bold front and con- 
fident bearing, and the prompt decision of his measures, had 
once more restored^ confidence among the French, Whose 
spirits rose as readily as they were cast down, and he was 
especially helped by the Creole girls, whose enthusiasm for 

* State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, vol. XXXIII, p. 90. 
'Ibid. Papers of Continental Congress, No. 71, vol. I, p. 267. *Ibid. 

* Under the command of Clark's cousin, Lieutenant John Rogers. 



328 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the expedition roused many of the more daring young men 
to volunteer under Clark's banner. By these means he gath- 
ered together a band of one hundred and seventy men, at 
whose head he marched out of Kaskaskia on the 7th of 
February.^ All the inhabitants escorted them out of the 
village, and the Jesuit priest, Gibault, gave them absolution 
at parting. 

The route by which they had to go was two hundred and 
forty miles in length. It lay through a beautiful and well- 
watered country of groves and prairies ; but at that season 
the march was necessarily attended with the utmost degree 
of hardship and fatigue. The weather had grown mild, so 
that there was no suffering from cold ; but in the thaw the ice 
on the rivers melted, great freshets followed, and all the low- 
lands and meadows were flooded. Clark's great object was 
to keep his troops in good spirits. Of course, he and the 
other officers shared every hardship and led in every labor. 
He encouraged the men to hunt game; and to "feast on it 
like Indian war-dancers, "~ each company in turn inviting the 
others to the smoking and plentiful banquets. One day 
they saw great herds of buffaloes and killed many of them. 
They had no tents f but at nightfall they kindled huge camp- 

* Letter to Henry. The letter to Mason says it was the Sth. 

" Clark's "Memoir." 

^ State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, vol. XXXIII, p. 90. 
"A Journal of Col. G. R. Clark. Proceedings from the 29th Jan'y 1779 to 
the 26th March Inst." [by Captain Bowman]. This journal has been 
known for a long time. The original is supposed to have been lost ; but 
either this is it or else it is a contemporary MS. copy. In the "Campaign 
in the Illinois" (Cincinnati, Robert Clarke & Co., 1869), p. 99, there is a 
printed copy of the original. The Washington MS. differs from it in one 
or two particulars. Thus, the printed diary in the "Campaign," on p. 99, 
line 3, says "fifty volunteers"; the MS. copy says "50 French volunteers." 
Line 5 in the printed copy says "and such other Americans" ; in the MS. 
it says "and several other Americans." Lines 6 and 7 of the printed copy 
read as follows in the MS. (but only make doubtful sense) : "These with 
a number of horses designed for the settlement of Kantuck &c. Jan. 30th, 
on which Col. Clark," etc. Lines 10 and 11 of the printed copy read in the 
MS.: "was let alone till spring that he with his Indians would undoubtedly 
cut us all off." Lines 13 and 14 of the printed copy read in the MS. : 
"Jan. 31st, sent an express to Cahokia for volunteers. Nothing extraordi- 
nary this day." 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 329 

fires, and spent the evenings merrily round the piles of 
blazing logs, in hunter fashion, feasting on bear's ham and 
buffalo hump, elk saddle, venison haunch and the breast of 
the wild turkey, some singing of love and the chase and 
war, and others dancing, after the manner of the French 
trappers and wood-runners. 

Thus they kept on, marching hard but gleefully and in 
good spirits until, after a week, they came to the drowned 
lands of the Wabash. They first struck the two branches of 
the Little Wabash. Their channels were a league apart, 
but the flood was so high that they now made one great river 
five miles in width, the overflow of water being three feet 
deep in the shallowest part of the plains between and along- 
side them. 

Clark instantly started to build a pirogue ; then crossing 
over the first channel he put up a scaffold on the edge of the 
flooded plain. He ferried his men over, and brought the 
baggage across and placed it on the scaffold; then he swam 
the pack-horses over, loaded them as they stood belly-deep 
in the water beside the scaffold, and marched his men on 
through the water until they came to the second channel, which 
was crossed as the first had been. The building of the pirogue 
and the ferrying took three days in all. 

They had by this time come so near Vincennes that they 
dared not fire a gun for fear of being discovered ; besides, 
the floods had driven the game all away; so that they soon 
began to feel hunger, while their progress was very slow, and 
they suffered much from the fatigue of travelling all day long 
through deep mud or breast-high water. On the 17th they 
reached the Embarras River, but could not cross, nor could 
they find a dry spot on which to camp ; at last they found 
the water falling off a small, almost submerged hillock, and 
on this they huddled through the night. At daybreak they 
heard Hamilton's morning gun from the fort, that was but 
three leagues distant; and as they could not find a ford 
across the Embarras, they followed it down and camped by 



330 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the Wabash. There Clark set his drenched, hungry, and 
dispirited followers to building some pirogues; while two or 
three unsuccessful attempts were made to get men across 
the river that they might steal boats. He determined to leave 
his horses at this camp; for it was almost impossible to get 
them farther.^ 

On the morning of the 20th the men had been without 
food for nearly two days. Many of the Creole volunteers 
began to despair, and talked of returning. Clark knew that 
his Americans, veterans who had been with him for over 
a year, had no idea of abandoning the enterprise, nor yet 
of suffering the last extremities of hunger while they had 
horses along. He paid no heed to the request of the Creoles, 
nor did he even forbid their going back; he only laughed 
at them, and told them to go out and try to kill a deer. He 
knew that without any violence he could yet easily detain 
the volunteers for a few days longer; and he kept up the 
spirits of the whole command by his undaunted and confident 
mien. The canoes were nearly finished ; and about noon a 
small boat with five Frenchmen from Vincennes was cap- 
tured. From these Clark gleaned the welcome intelligence 
that the condition of affairs was unchanged at the fort, and 
that there was no suspicion of any impending danger. In 
the evening the men were put in still better heart by one of 
the hunters killing a deer. 

It rained all the next day. By dawn Clark began to ferry 
the troops over the Wabash in the canoes he had built, and 
they were soon on the eastern bank of the river, the side on 
which Vincennes stood. They now hoped to get to town 
by nightfall ; but there was no dry land for leagues round- 
about, save where a few hillocks rose island-like above the 
flood. The Frenchmen whom they had captured said they 
could not possibly get along; but Clark led the men in person, 

^This is not exactly stated in the "Memoir"; but it speaks of the horses 
as being with the troops on the 20th ; and after they left camp, on the 
evening of the 21st, states that he "would have given a good deal . . . for 
one of the horses." 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 331 

and they waded with infinite toil for about three miles, the 
water often up to their chins, and they then camped on a hil- 
lock for the night. Clark kept the troops cheered up by every 
possible means, and records that he was much assisted by 
"3. little antic drummer," a young boy who did good service 
by making the men laugh with his pranks and jokes. ^ 

Next morning they resumed their march, the strongest 
wading painfully through the water, while the weak and 
famished were carried in the canoes, which were so ham- 
pered by the bushes that they could hardly go even as fast as 
the toiling footmen. The evening and morning guns of 
the fort were heard plainly by the men as they plodded on- 
ward, numbed and weary. Clark, as usual, led them in per- 
son. Once they came to a place so deep that there seemed no 
crossing, for the canoes could find no ford. It was hopeless 
to go back or stay still, and the men huddled together, appar- 
ently about to despair. But Clark suddenly blackened his face 
with gunpowder, gave the war-whoop, and sprang forward 
boldly into the ice-cold water, wading out straight toward 
the point at which they were aiming; and the men followed 
him, one after another, without a word. Then he ordered 
those nearest him to begin one of their favorite songs; 
and soon the whole line took it up, and marched cheerfully 
onward. He intended to have the canoes ferry them over 
the deepest part, but before they came to it one of the men 
felt that his feet were in a path, and by carefully following 
it they got to a sugar-camp, a hillock covered with maples, 
which once had been tapped for sugar. Here they camped 
for the night, still six miles from the town, without food, and 

^ Law, in his "Vincennes" (p. 32), makes the deeds of the drummer the 
basis for a traditional story that is somewhat too highly colored. Thus 
he makes Clark's men at one time mutiny, and refuse to go forward. 
This they never did ; the Creoles once got dejected and wished to return, 
but the Americans, by Clark's own statement, never faltered at all. Law's 
"Vincennes" is an excellent little book, but he puts altogether too much 
confidence in mere tradition. For another instance beside this, see page 68, 
where he describes Clark as entrapping and killing "upwards of fifty 
Indians," instead of only eight or nine, as was actually the case. 



ZZ2 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

drenched through. The prisoners from Vincennes, sullen 
and weary, insisted that they could not possibly get to the 
town through the deep water ; the prospect seemed almost 
hopeless even to the iron-willed, steel-sinewed backwoods- 
men;^ but their leader never lost courage for a moment. 

That night was bitterly cold, for there was a heavy frost, 
and the ice formed half an inch thick round the edges and 
in the smooth water. But the sun rose bright and glorious, 
and Clark, in burning words, told his stiffened, famished, half- 
frozen followers that the evening would surely see them at 
the goal of their hopes. Without waiting for an answer, he 
plunged into the water, and they followed him with a cheer, 
in Indian file. Before the third man had entered the water he 
halted and told one of his officers " to close the rear with 
twenty-five men, and to put to death any man who refused 
to march; and the whole line cheered him again. 

Then came the most trying time of the whole march. Be- 
fore them lay a broad sheet of water, covering what was 
known as the Horse Shoe Plain; the floods had made it a 
shallow lake four miles across, unbroken by so much as a 
hand's breadth of dry land. On its farther side was a dense 
wood. Clark led breast-high in the water with fifteen or 
twenty of the strongest men next him. About the middle of 
the plain the cold and exhaustion told so on the weaker men 
that the canoes had to take them aboard and carry them on 
to the land ; and from that time on the little dugouts plied 
frantically to and fro to save the more helpless from drown- 
ing. Those who, though weak, could still move onward, 
clung to the stronger, and struggled ahead, Clark animating 
them in every possible way. When they at last reached the 
woods the water became so deep that it was to the shoulders 
of the tallest, but the weak and those of low stature could now 
cling to the bushes and old logs, until the canoes were able 
to ferry them to a spot of dry land, some ten acres in extent, 

* Bowman ends his entry for the day with : "No provisions yet. Lord 
help us!" * Bowman. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 333 

that lay near by. The strong' and tall got ashore and built 
fires. Many on reaching the shore fell flat on their faces, half 
in the water, and could not move farther. It was found that 
the fires did not help the very weak, so every such a one was 
put between two strong men who ran him up and down by 
the arms, and thus soon made him recover.^ 

Fortunately, at this time an Indian canoe, paddled by some 
squaws, was discovered and overtaken by one of the dugouts. 
In it was half a quarter of a buffalo, with some corn, tallow, 
and kettles. This was an invaluable prize. Broth was im- 
mediately made, and was served out to the most weakly with 
great care; almost all of the men got some, but very many 
gave their shares to the weakly, rallying and joking them to 
put them in good heart. The little refreshment, together with 
the fires and the bright weather, gave new life to all. They 
set out again in the afternoon, crossed a deep, narrow lake 
in their canoes, and after marching a short distance came to 
a copse of timber from which they saw the fort and town 
not two miles away. Here they halted, and looked to their 
rifles and ammunition, making ready for the fight. Every 
man now feasted his eyes with the sight of what he had so 
long labored to reach, and forthwith forgot that he had suf- 
fered anything; making light of what had been gone through, 
and passing from dogged despair to the most exultant self- 
confidence. 

Between the party and the town lay a plain, the hollows 
being filled with little pools, on which were many water-fowl, 
and some of the townspeople were in sight, on horseback, 
shooting ducks. Clark sent out a few active young Creoles, 
who succeeded in taking prisoner one of these fowling horse- 
men. From him it was learned that neither Hamilton nor 
any one else had the least suspicion that any attack could 
possibly be made at that season, but that a couple of hundred 
Indian warriors had just come to town. 

Clark was rather annoyed at the last bit of information. 
^ Clark's "Memoir." 



334 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The number of armed men in town, including British, French, 
and Indians about quadrupled his own force. This made 
heavy odds to face, even with the advantage of a surprise, 
and in spite of the fact that his own men were sure to fight 
to the last, since failure meant death by torture. Moreover, 
if he made the attack without warning, some of the Indians 
and Vincennes people would certainly be slain, and the rest 
would be thereby made his bitter enemies, even if he suc- 
ceeded. On the other hand, he found out from the prisoner 
that the French were very lukewarm to the British, and 
would certainly not fight if they could avoid it; and that half 
of the Indians were ready to side with the Americans. Fi- 
nally, there was a good chance that before dark some one 
would discover the approach of the troops and would warn 
the British, thereby doing away with all chance of a surprise. 

After thinking it over Clark decided, as the less of two 
evils, to follow the hazardous course of himself announcing 
his approach. He trusted that the boldness of such a course, 
together with the shock of his utterly unexpected appearance, 
would paralyze his opponents and incline the wavering to 
favor him. So he released the prisoner and sent him in ahead, 
with a letter to the people of Vincennes. By this letter he 
proclaimed to the French that he was at that moment about 
to attack the town; that those townspeople who were friends 
to the Americans were to remain in their houses, where they 
would not be molested ; that the friends of the king should 
repair to the fort, join the "hair-buyer general," and fight like 
men; and that those who did neither of these two things, 
but remained armed and in the streets, must expect to be 
treated as enemies.^ 

Having sent the messenger in advance, he waited until his 
men were rested and their rifles and powder dry, and then 
at sundown marched straight against the town. He divided 
his force into two divisions, leading in person the first, which 
consisted of two companies of Americans and of the Kas- 
^ Clark's "Memoir." 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 335 

kaskia Creoles; while the second, led by Bowman, contained 
Bowman's own company, and the Cahokians. His final orders 
to the men were to march with the greatest regularity, to 
obey the orders of their officers, and, above all, to keep per- 
fect silence.!^ The rapidly gathering dusk pervented any 
discovery of his real numbers. 

In sending in the messenger he had builded even better than 
he knew ; luck which had long been against him now at last 
favored him. Hamilton's runners had seen Clark's camp- 
fires the night before ; and a small scouting-party of British 
regulars, Detroit volunteers, and Indians had in consequence 
been sent to find out what had caused them.- These men 
were not made of such stern stuff as Clark's followers, nor 
had they such a commander ; and after going some miles they 
were stopped by the floods, and started to return. Before 

^ In the Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 289, there is a long 
extract from what is called "Col. Clark's Journal." This is the official 
report which he speaks of as being carried by William Moires, his express, 
who was taken by the Indians (see his letter to Henry of April 29th; 
there seems, by the way, to be some doubt whether this letter was not 
written to Jefferson; there is a copy in the Jefferson MSS., Series I, vol. I). 
This is not only the official report, but also the earliest letter Clark wrote 
on the subject, and therefore the most authoritative. The paragraph relat- 
ing to the final march against Vincennes is as follows : 

"I order'd the march in the first division Capt. Williams, Capt. Worth- 
ingtons Company & the Cascaskia Volunteers, in the 2d commanded by 
Capt. Bowman his own Company & the Cohos Volunteers. At sun down 
I put the divisions in motion to march in the greatest order & regularity 
& observe the orders of their officers. Above all to be silent — the 5 men 
we took in the canoes were our guides. We entered the town on the 
upper part leaving detached Lt. Bayley & 15 rifle men to attack the Fort 
& keep up a fire to harrass them until we took possession of the town & 
they were to remain on that duty till relieved by another party, the two 
divisions marched into the town & took possession of the main street, 
put guards &c without the least molestation." 

This effectually disposes of the account, which was accepted by Clark 
himself in his old age, that he ostentatiously paraded his men and marched 
them to and fro with many flags flying, so as to impress the British with 
his numbers. Instead of indulging in any such childishness (which would 
merely have warned the British, and put them on their guard), he in 
reality made as silent an approach as possible, under cover of the darkness. 

Hamilton, in his narrative, speaks of the attack as being made on the 
22d of February, not the 23d, as Clark says. 

* Hamilton's "brief account" in the Haldimand MSS. The party was 
led by Lieutenant Schieffelin of the regulars and the French captains 
Lamothe and Maisonville. 



336 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

they got back, Vincennes was assailed. Hamilton trusted so 
completely to the scouting-party, and to the seemingly impass- 
able state of the country, that his watch was very lax. The 
Creoles in the town, when Clark's proclamation was read to 
them, gathered eagerly to discuss it; but so great was the 
terror of his name, and so impressed and appalled were they 
by the mysterious approach of an unknown army, and the 
confident and menacing language with which its coming was 
heralded, that none of them dared show themselves partisans 
of the British by giving warning to the garrison. The 
Indians likewise heard vague rumors of what had occurred 
and left the town; a number of the inhabitants who were 
favorable to the British followed the same course.^ Hamil- 
ton, attracted by the commotion, sent down his soldiers to find 
out what had happened; but before they succeeded, the Amer- 
icans were upon them. 

About seven o'clock^ Clark entered the town, and at once 
pushed his men on to attack the fort. Had he charged he 
could probably have taken it at once; for so unprepared were 
the garrison that the first rifle-shots were deemed by them 
to come from drunken Indians. But of course he had not 
counted on such a state of things. He had so few men that 
he dared not run the risk of suffering a heavy loss. More- 
over, the backwoodsmen had neither swords nor bayonets. 

Most of the Creole townspeople received Clark joyfully, 
and rendered him much assistance, especially by supplying 
him with powder and ball, his own stock of ammunition being 
scanty. One of the Indian chiefs ^ offered to bring his tribe 
to the support of the Americans, but Clark answered that 
all he asked of the red men was that they should for the mo- 
ment remain neutral. A few of the young Creoles were allowed 

*Haldimand MSS. Series B, vol. CXXII, p. 337. Account brought to 
the people of Detroit of the loss of Vincennes, by a Captain Chene, who 
was then livins in the village. As the Virginians entered it he fled to the 
woods with some Huron and Ottawa warriors; next day he was joined by 
some French families and some Miamis and Pottawatomies. 

' Clark's letter to Henry. 

' A son of the Piankeshaw head chief Tabac. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 337 

to join in the attack, however, it being deemed good poHcy to 
commit them definitely to the American side. 

Fifty of the American troops were detached to guard 
against any relief from without, while the rest attacked the 
fort; yet Hamilton's scouting-party crept up, lay hid all night 
in an old barn, and at daybreak rushed into the fort.^ Firing 
was kept up with very little intermission throughout the 
night. At one o'clock the moon set, and Clark took advan- 
tage of the darkness to throw up an intrenchment within 
rifle-shot of the strongest battery, which consisted of two 
guns. All of the cannon and swivels in the fort were placed 
about eleven feet above the ground, on the upper floors of 
the strong blockhouses that formed the angles of the pal- 
isaded walls. At sunrise on the 24th the riflemen from the 
intrenchment opened a hot fire into the port-holes of the bat- 

- Hamilton's "Narrative." Clark in his "Memoir" asserts that he de- 
signedly let them through, and could have shot them down as they tried 
to clamber over the stockade if he had wished. Bowman corroborates 
Hamilton, saying: "We sent a party to intercept them, but missed them. 
However, we took one of their men, . . . the rest making their escape 
under the cover of the night into the fort." Bowman's journal is for this 
siege much more trustworthy than Clark's "Memoir." In the latter, 
Clark makes not a few direct misstatements, and many details are colored 
so as to give them an altered aspect. As an instance of the different 
ways in which he told an event at the time, and thirty years later, take 
the following accounts of the same incident. The first is from the letter 
to Henry (State Department MSS.), the second from the "Memoir." 
I. "A few days ago I received certain intelligence of Wm. Moires my 
express to you being killed near the Falls of Ohio, news truly disagreeable 
to me, as I fear many of my letters will fall into the hands of the enemy 
at Detroit." 2. "Poor Myres the express, who set out on the isth, got 
killed on his passage, and his packet fell into the hands of the enemy ; but 
I had been so much on my guard that there was not a sentence in it that 
could be of any disadvantage to us for the enemy to know ; and there were 
private letters from soldiers to their friends designedly wrote to deceive 
in cases of such accidents." His whole account of the night attack and of 
his treating with Hamilton is bombastic. If his account of the incessant 
"blaze of fire" of the Americans is true, they must have wasted any 
amount of ammunition perfectly uselessly. Unfortunately, most of the 
small Western historians who have written about Clark have really 
damaged his reputation by the absurd inflation of their language. They 
were adepts in the forcible-feeble stvle of writing, a sample of which is 
their rendering him ludicrous by calling him the "Hannibal of the West" 
and the "Washington of the West." Moreover, they base his claims to 
greatness, not on his really great deeds, but on the half-imaginary feats 
of childish cunning he related in his old age. 



338 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tery, and speedily silenced both guns.^ The artillery and mus- 
ketry of the defenders did very little damage to the assail- 
ants, who lost but one man wounded, though some of the 
houses in the town were destroyed by the cannon-balls. In 
return, the backwoodsmen, by firing into the ports, soon ren- 
dered it impossible for the guns to be run out and served, 
and killed or severely wounded six or eight of the garrison; 
for the Americans showed themselves much superior, both 
in marksmanship and in the art of sheltering themselves, to 
the British regulars and French Canadians against whom 
they were pitted. 

Early in the forenoon Clark summoned the fort to sur- 
render, and while waiting for the return of the flag his men 
took the opportunity of getting breakfast, the first regular 
meal they had had for six days. Hamilton declined to sur- 
render, but proposed a three days' truce instead. This propo- 
sition Clark instantly rejected, and the firing again began, 
the backwoodsmen beseeching Clark to let them storm the 
fort; he refused. While the negotiations were going on a 
singular incident occurred. A party of Hamilton's Indians 
returned from a successful scalping expedition against the 
frontier, and being ignorant of what had taken place, marched 
straight into the town. Some of Clark's backwoodsmen in- 
stantly fell on them and killed or captured nine, besides two 
French partisans who had been out with them.^ One of 
the latter was the son of a creole lieutenant in Clark's troops, 
and after much pleading his father and friends procured the 
release of himself and his comrade.^ Clark determined to 
make a signal example of the six captured Indians, both to 

^Clark's letter to Henry. 

^ Ibid. In the letter to Mason he says two scalped, six captured and 
afterward tomahawked. Bowman says two killed, three wounded, six 
captured ; and calls the two partisans "prisoners." Hamilton and Clark 
say they were French allies of the British, the former saying there were 
two, the latter mentioning only one. Hamilton says there were fifteen 
Indians. 

' The incident is noteworthy as showing how the French were divided ; 
throughout the Revolutionary War in the West they furnished troops to 
help in turn whites and Indians, British and Americans. The Illinois 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 339 

strike terror into the rest and to show them how powerless 
the British were to protect them; so he had them led within 
sight of the fort and there tomahawked and thrown into 
the river.^ The sight did not encourage the garrison. The 
English troops remained firm and eager for the fight, though 
they had suffered the chief loss; but the Detroit volunteers 
showed evident signs of panic. 

In the afternoon Hamilton sent out another flag, and he 
and Clark met in the old French church to arrange for the 
capitulation. Helm, who was still a prisoner on parole, and 
was told by Clark that he was to remain such until recap- 
tured, was present; so were the British Major Hay and the 
American Captain Bowman. There was some bickering and 
recrimination between the leaders, Clark reproaching Hamil- 
ton with having his hands dyed in the blood of the women 
and children slain by his savage allies; while the former an- 
swered that he was not to blame for obeying the orders of his 
superiors, and that he himself had done all he could to make 
the savages act mercifully. It was finally agreed that the 
garrison, seventy-nine men in all,- should surrender as pris- 
oners of war. The British commander has left on record 
his bitter mortification at having to yield the fort "to a set 
of uncivilized Virginia woodsmen armed with rifles." In 
truth, it was a most notable achievement. Clark had taken, 
without artillery, a heavy stockade, protected by cannon and 
swivels, and garrisoned by trained soldiers. His superiority 
in numbers was very far from being in itself sufficient to 

French, however, generally remained faithful to the Republic, and the 
Detroit French to the Crown. 

2 Hamilton, who bore the most vindictive hatred to Clark, implies that 
the latter tomahawked the prisoners himself ; but Bowman explicitly says 
that it was done while Clark and Hamilton were meeting at the church. 
Be it noticed, in passing, that both Clark and Hamilton agreed that though 
the Vincennes people favored the Americans, only a very few of them 
took active part on Clark's side. 

'Letter to Henry. Hamilton's letter says sixty rank and file of the 
8th Regiment and Detroit volunteers ; the other nineteen were officers and 
under-officers, artillerymen, and French partisan leaders. The return of 
the garrison already quoted shows he had between eighty and ninety white 
troops. 



340 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

bring about the result, as witness the almost invariable suc- 
cess with which the similar but smaller Kentucky forts, un- 
provided with artillery and held by fewer men, were de- 
fended against much larger forces than Clark's. Much credit 
belongs to Clark's men, but most belongs to their leader. 
The boldness of his plan and the resolute skill with which 
he followed it out, his perseverance through the intense hard- 
ships of the midwinter march, the address with which he kept 
the French and Indians neutral, and the masterful way in 
which he controlled his own troops, together with the ability 
and courage he displayed in the actual attack, combined to 
make his feat the most memorable of all the deeds done west 
of the Alleghanies in the Revolutionary War.^ It was like- 
wise the most important in its results, for had he been de- 
feated we would not only have lost the Illinois, but in all 
probability Kentucky also. 

Immediately after taking the fort, Clark sent Helm and 
fifty men in boats armed with swivels up the Wabash to 
intercept a party of forty French volunteers from Detroit, 
who were bringing to Vincennes bateaux heavily laden with 
goods of all kinds, to the value of ten thousand pounds ster- 
ling.- In a few days Helm returned successful, and the spoils, 
together with the goods taken at Vincennes, were distrib- 
uted among the soldiers, who "got almost rich."^ The offi- 
cers kept nothing save a few needed articles of clothing. The 
gunboat Willing appeared shortly after the taking of the fort, 
the crew bitterly disappointed that they were not in time 
for the fighting. The long-looked-for messenger from the 

^ Hamilton himself, at the conclusion of his "brief account," speaks as 
follows in addressing his superiors : "The difficulties and dangers of Colo- 
nel Clark's march from the Illinois were such as required great courage 
to encounter and great perseverance to overcome. In trusting to traitors 
he was more fortunate than myself; whether, on the whole, he was enti- 
tled to success is not for me to determine." Both Clark and Hamilton 
give minute accounts of various interviews that took place between them ; 
the accounts do not agree, and it is needless to say that in the narration 
of each the other appears to disadvantage, being quoted as practically 
admitting various acts of barbarity, etc. 

* Letter to IJcnry. '"Memoir." 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 341 

governor of Virginia also arrived, bearing to the soldiers 
the warm thanks of the legislature of that State for their 
capture of Kaskaskia and the promise of more substantial 
reward.^ 

Clark was forced to parole most of his prisoners, but 
twenty-seven, including Hamilton himself, were sent to Vir- 
ginia. The backwoodsmen regarded Hamilton with revenge- 
ful hatred, and he was not well treated while among them,^ 
save only by Boone — for the kind-hearted, fearless old pio- 
neer never felt anything but pity for a fallen enemy. All 
the borderers, including Clark,^ believed that the British com- 
mander himself gave rewards to the Indians for the Amer- 
ican scalps they brought in; and because of his alleged be- 
havior in this regard he was kept in close confinement by the 
Virginia government until, through the intercession of Wash- 
ington, he was at last released and exchanged. Exactly how 
much he was to blame it is difficult to say. Certainly the 
blame rests even more with the Crown and the ruling class 
in Britain, than with Hamilton who merely carried out the 
orders of his superiors; and though he undoubtedly heartily 
approved of these orders, and executed them with eager zest, 
yet it seems that he did what he could — which was very lit- 
tle — to prevent unnecessary atrocities. 

The crime consisted in employing the savages at all in a 
war waged against men, women, and children alike. Un- 

* One hundred and fifty thousand acres of land opposite Louisville were 
finally allotted them. Some of the Piankeshaw Indians ceded Clark a tract 
of land for his own use, but the Virginia legislature very properly dis- 
allowed the grant. 

^ In Hamilton's "brief account" he says that their lives were often threat- 
ened by the borderers, but that "our guard behaved very well, protected us, 
and hunted for us." At the Falls he found "a number of settlers who lived 
in log-houses, in eternal apprehension from the Indians," and he adds: 
"The people at the forts are in a wretched state, obliged to enclose the cat- 
tle every night within the fort, and carry their rifles to the field when they 
go to plough or cut wood." He speaks of Boone's kindness in his short 
printed narrative in the Royal Gazette. 

' Clark, in his letter to Mason, alludes to Hamilton's known "barbarity" ; 
but in his "Memoir" he speaks very well of Hamilton, and attributes the 
murderous forays to his subordinates, one of whom, Major Hay, he par- 
ticularly specifies. 



342 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

doubtedly the British at Detroit followed the example of the 
French ^ in paying money to the Indians for the scalps of 
their foes. It is equally beyond question that the British 
acted with much more humanity than their French prede- 
cessors had shown. Apparently the best officers utterly disap- 
proved of the whole business of scalp-buying; but it was 
eagerly followed by many of the reckless agents and par- 
tisan leaders, British, Tories, and Canadians, who themselves 
often accompanied the Indians against the frontier and wit- 
nessed or shared in their unmentionable atrocities. It is 
impossible to acquit either the British home government or 
its foremost representatives at Detroit of a large share in 
the responsibility for the appalling brutality of these men 
and their red allies; but the heaviest blame rests on the home 
government. 

Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and was 
able to establish permanent garrisons at Vincennes, Kas- 
kaskia, and Cahokia. With the Indian tribes who lived 
roundabout he made firm peace; against some hunting bands 
of Delawares who came in and began to commit ravages he 
waged ruthless and untiring war, sparing the women and 
children, but killing all the males capable of bearing arms, 
and he harried most of them out of the territory, while the 
rest humbly sued for peace. His own men worshipped him; 
the French loved and stood in awe of him, while the Indians 
respected and feared him greatly. During the remainder of 
the Revolutionary War the British were not able to make 
any serious effort to shake the hold he had given the Amer- 
icans on the region lying around and between Vincennes and 
the Illinois. Moreover, he so effectually pacified the tribes 
between the Wabash and the Mississippi that they did not 

^ See Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," II, 421, for examples of French 
payments, some of a peculiarly flagrant sort. A certain kind of American 
pseudohistorian is especially fond of painting the British as behaving to 
us with unexampled barbarity ; yet nothing is more sure than that the 
French were far more cruel and less humane in their contests with us than 
were the British. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES 343 

become open and formidable foes of the whites until, with 
the close of the war against Britain, Kentucky passed out 
of the stage when Indian hostilities threatened her very life. 

The fame of Clark's deeds and the terror of his prowess 
spread to the Southern Indians, and the British at Natchez 
trembled lest they should share the fate that had come on 
Kaskaskia and Vincennes.^ Flatboats from the Illinois went 
down to New Orleans, and keelboats returned from that city 
with arms and munitions, or were sent up to Pittsburg;- and 
the following spring Clark built a fort on the east bank of 
the Mississippi below the Ohio.^ It was in the Chickasaw 
territory, and these warlike Indians soon assaulted it, making 
a determined effort to take it by storm, and though they were 
repulsed with very heavy slaughter, yet, to purchase their 
neutrality, the Americans were glad to abandon the fort. 

Clark himself, toward the end of 1779, took up his abode 
at the Falls of the Ohio, where he served in some sort as a 
shield both for the Illinois and for Kentucky, and from 
whence he hoped some day to march against Detroit. This 
was his darling scheme, which he never ceased to cherish. 
Through no fault of his own, the day never came when he 
could put it into execution. 

He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the Vir- 
ginia militia, and to the harassed settlers in Kentucky his 
mere name was a tower of strength. He was the sole orig- 
inator of the plan for the conquest of the north vv^estern lands, 
and, almost unaided, he had executed his own scheme. For 

^ State Department MSS. ("Intercepted Letters"), No. 51, vol. II, pp. 
17 and 45. Letter of James Colbert, a half-breed in the British interest, 
resident at that time among the Chickasaws, May 25, 1779, etc. 

^ The history of the early navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi begins 
many years before the birth of any of our Western pioneers, when the 
French went up and down them. Long before the Revolutionary War 
occasional hunters, in dugouts, or settlers going to Natchez in flatboats, 
descended these rivers, and from Pittsburg craft were sent to New 
Orleans to open negotiations with the Spaniards as soon as hostilities broke 
out ; and ammunition was procured from New Orleans as soon as Inde- 
pendence was declared. 

^ In lat. 36° 30'; it was named Fort JefTerson. Jeflferson MSS., ist 
Series, vol. XIX. Clark's letter. 



344 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

a year he had been wholly cut off from all communication 
with the home authorities, and had received no help of any 
kind. Alone, and with the very slenderest means, he had 
conquered and held a vast and beautiful region, which but 
for him would have formed part of a foreign and hostile em- 
pire ;^ he had clothed and paid his soldiers with the spoils 
of his enemies; he had spent his own fortune as carelessly 
as he had risked his life, and the only reward that he was 
destined for many years to receive was the sword voted him 
by the legislature of Virginia.^ 

^ It is of course impossible to prove that but for Clark's conquest the 
Ohio would have been made our boundary in 1783, exactly as it is im- 
possible to prove that but for Wolfe the English would not have taken 
Quebec. But when we take into account the determined efforts of Spain 
and France to confine us to the land east of the Alleghanies, and then 
to the land southeast of the Ohio, the slavishness of Congress in instruct- 
ing our commissioners to do whatever France wished, and the readiness 
shown by one of the commissioners, Franklin, to follow these instructions, 
it certainly looks as if there would not even have been an effort made by 
us to get the northwestern territory had we not already possessed it, 
thanks to Clark. As it was, it was only owing to Jay's broad patriotism 
and stern determination that our Western boundaries were finally made 
so far-reaching. None of our early diplomats did as much for the West 
as Jay, whom at one time the whole West hated and reviled ; Mann Butler, 
whose politics are generally very sound, deserves especial credit for the 
justice he does the New Yorker. 

It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair. It 
was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from Virginia, 
but it was retained only owing to the power of the United States and the 
patriotism of such Northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the 
negotiators of the final treaty. Had Virginia alone been in interest. Great 
Britain would not have even paid her claims the compliment of listening 
to them. Virginia's share in the history of the nation has ever been gal- 
lant and leading; but the Revolutionary War was emphatically fought by 
Americans for America; no part could have won without the help of the 
whole, and every victory was thus a victory for all, in which all alike can 
take pride. 

^A probably truthful tradition reports that when the Virginian commis- 
sioners offered Clark the sword, the grim old fighter, smarting under the 
sense of his wrongs, threw it indignantly from him, telling the envoys 
that he demanded from Virginia his just rights and the promised reward 
of his services, not an empty compliment. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE IN KENTUCKY AND 
THE NORTHWEST 

1779-1781 

CLARK'S successful campaigns against the Illinois 
towns and Vincennes, besides giving the Americans 
a foothold north of the Ohio, were of the utmost 
importance to Kentucky. Until this time, the Kentucky set- 
tlers had been literally fighting for life and home, and again 
and again their strait had been so bad that it seemed — and 
was — almost an even chance whether they would be driven 
from the land. The successful outcome of Clark's expedi- 
tion temporarily overawed the Indians, and, moreover, made 
the French towns outposts for the protection of the set- 
tlers ; so that for several years thereafter the tribes west of 
the Wabash did but little against the Americans. The con- 
fidence of the backwoodsmen in their own ultimate triumph 
was likewise very much increased; while the fame of the 
Western region was greatly spread abroad. From all these 
causes it resulted that there was no immediate and great in- 
crease of immigration thither, the bulk of the immigrants 
of course stopping in Kentucky, though a very few, even 
thus early, went to Illinois. Every settlement in Kentucky 
was still in jeopardy, and there came moments of dejection, 
when some of her bravest leaders spoke gloomily of the 
possibility of the Americans being driven from the land. 
But these were merely words such as even strong men utter 
when sore from fresh disaster. After the spring of 1779, 

345 



346 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

there was never any real danger that the whites would be 
forced to abandon Kentucky. 

The land laws which the Virginia legislature enacted about 
this time^ were partly a cause, partly a consequence, of the 
increased emigration to Kentucky, and of the consequent rise 
in the value of its wild lands. Long before the Revolution, 
shrewd and far-seeing speculators had organized land com- 
panies to acquire grants of vast stretches of Western terri- 
tory; but the land only acquired an actual value for private 
individuals after the incoming of settlers. In addition to 
the companies, many private individuals had acquired rights 
to tracts of land; some, under the royal proclamation, giving 
bounties to the officers and soldiers in the French war ; others 
by actual payment into the public treasury.^ The Virginia 
legislature now ratified all titles to regularly surveyed ground 
claimed under charter, military bounty, and old treasury 
rights, to the extent of four hundred acres each. Tracts of 
land were reserved as bounties for the Virginia troops, both 
Continentals and militia. Each family of actual settlers was 
allowed a settlement right to four hundred acres for the 
small sum of nine dollars, and, if very poor, the land was 
given them on credit. Every such settler also acquired a 
pre-emptive right to purchase a thousand acres adjoining, at 
the regulation State price, which was forty pounds, paper 
money, or forty dollars in specie, for every hundred acres. 
One peculiar provision was made necessary by the system 
of settling in forted villages. Every such village was al- 
lowed six hundred and forty acres, which no outsider could 
have surveyed or claimed, for it was considered the prop- 
erty of the townsmen, to be held in common until an equita- 
ble division could be made ; while each family likewise had 

* May, 1779; they did not take effect nor was a land court established 
until the following fall, when the land-office was opened at St. Asaphs, 
October 13th. Isaac Shelby's claim was the first one considered and 
granted. He had raised a crop of corn in the country in 1776. 

' The Ohio Company was the greatest of the companies. There were 
"also, among private rights, the ancient importation rights, the Henderson 
Company rights," etc. See Marshall, I, 82. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 347 

a settlement right to four hundred acres adjoining the vil- 
lage. The vacant lands were sold, warrants for a hundred 
acres costing forty dollars in specie; but later on, toward the 
close of the war, Virginia tried to buoy up her mass of de- 
preciated paper currency by accepting it nearly at par for 
land-warrants, thereby reducing the cost of these to less 
than fifty cents for a hundred acres. No warrant applied 
to a particular spot; it was surveyed on any vacant or pre- 
sumably vacant ground. Each individual had the surveying 
done wherever he pleased, the county surveyor usually ap- 
pointing some skilled woodsman to act as his deputy. 

In the end the natural result of all this was to involve 
half the people of Kentucky in lawsuits over their land, as 
there were often two or three titles to each patch, ^ and the 
surveys crossed each other in hopeless tangles. Immediately, 
the system gave a great stimulus to immigration, for it made 
it easy for any incoming settler to get title to his farm, and 
it also strongly attracted all land speculators. Many well- 
to-do merchants or planters of the seaboard sent agents out 
to buy lands in Kentucky; and these agents either hired the 
old pioneers, such as Boone and Kenton, to locate and sur- 
vey the lands, or else purchased their claims from them out- 
right. The advantages of following the latter plan were 
of course obvious ; for the pioneers were sure to have chosen 
fertile, well-watered spots; and though they asked more than 
the State, yet ready money was so scarce, and the deprecia- 
tion of the currency so great, that even thus the land only cost 
a few cents an acre." 

'McAfee MSS. 

* From the Clay MSS.: "Virginia, Frederick Co. to wit: This day came 
William Smith of [illegible] before me John A. Woodcock, a Justice of 
the peace of the same county, who being of full age deposeth and saith 
that about the first of June 1780, being in Kentucky and empowered to 
purchase Land, for Mr. James Ware, he the deponent agreed with a cer- 
tain Simon Kenton of Kentucky for 1000 Acres of Land about 2 or 3 
miles from the big salt spring on Licking, that the sd. Kenton on condi- 
tion that the sd. Smith would pay him £100 in hand and £100 more when 
sd. Land was surveyed, . . . sd. Kenton on his part wou'd have the land 
surveyed and a fee Simple made there to. . . . sd. Land was first rate 



348 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Thus it came about that with the fall of 1779 ^ strong 
stream of emigration set toward Kentucky, from the back- 
woods districts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Caro- 
lina. In company with the real settlers came many land 
speculators, and also many families of weak, irresolute, or 
shiftless people, who soon tired of the ceaseless and grinding 
frontier strife for life, and drifted back to the place whence 
they had come.-"- Thus there were ever two tides — the larger 
setting toward Kentucky, the lesser toward the old States; so 
that the two streams passed each other on the Wilderness 
Road — for the people who came down the Ohio could not 
return against the current. Very many who did not return 
nevertheless found they were not fitted to grapple with the 
stern trials of existence on the border. Some of these suc- 
cumbed outright; others unfortunately survived, and clung 
with feeble and vicious helplessness to the skirts of their 
manlier fellows; and from them have descended the shiftless 
squatters, the "mean whites," the listless, uncouth men who 
half-till their patches of poor soil, and still cumber the earth 

Land and had a good Spring thereon. ... he agreed to warrant and de- 
fend the same . . . against all persons whatsoever . . . sworn to before 
me this 17th day of Nov., 1789." Later on, the purchaser, who did not 
take possession of the land for eight or nine years, feared it would not 
prove as fertile as Kenton had said, and threatened to sue Kenton ; but 
Kenton, evidently, had the whip-hand in the controversy, for the land, 
being out in the wilderness, the purchaser did not know its exact location, 
and when he threatened suit, and asked to be shown it, Kenton "swore 
that he would not shoe it at all." Letter of James Ware, November 29, 
1789. 

* Thus the increase of population is to be measured by the net gain of 
immigration over emigration, not by immigration alone. It is probably 
partly neglect of this fact, and partly simple exaggeration, that make the 
early statements of the additions to the Kentucky population so very un- 
trustworthy. In 1783, at the end of the Revolution, the population of 
Kentucky was probably nearer 12,000 than 20,000, and it had grown stead- 
ily each year. Yet Butler quotes Floyd as saying that in the spring of 
1780, 300 large family boats arrived at the Falls, which would mean an 
increase of perhaps four or five thousand people; and in the McAfee MSS. 
occurs the statement that in 1779 and 1780 nearly 20,000 people came to 
Kentucky. Both of these statements are probably mere estimates, greatly 
exaggerated ; any Westerner of to-day can instance similar reports of 
movements to Western localities, which under a strict census dwindled 
wofully. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 349 

in out-of-the-Vv^ay nooks, from the crannies of the Alleghanies 
to the canyons of the southern Rocky Mountains. 

In April, before this great rush of immigration began, but 
when it was clearly foreseen that it would immediately take 
place, the county court of Kentucky issued a proclamation 
to the new settlers, recommending them to keep as united 
and compact as possible, settling in "stations" or forted towns; 
and likewise advising each settlement to choose three or more 
trustees to take charge of their public affairs.^ Their recom- 
mendations and advice were generally followed. 

During 1779, the Indian war dragged on much as usual. 
The only expedition of importance was that undertaken in 
May by one hundred and sixty Kentuckians, commanded by 
the county lieutenant, John Bowman,- against the Indian 
town of Chillicothe. Logan, Harrod, and other famous fron- 
tier fighters went along. The town was surprised, several 
cabins burned, and a number of horses captured. But the 
Indians rallied, and took refuge in a central blockhouse and 
a number of strongly built cabins surrounding it, from which 
they fairly beat off the whites. They then followed to harass 
the rear of their retreating foes, but were beaten off in turn. 

* Durrett MSS., in the bound volume of "Papers relating to Louisville 
and Kentucky." On May i, 1780, the people living at the Falls, having 
established a town, forty-six of them signed a petition to have their title 
made good against Conolly. On February 7, 1781, John Todd and five 
other trustees of Louisville met ; they passed resolutions to erect a grist- 
mill and make surveys. 

^MS. "Notes on Kentucky," by George Bradford, who went there in 
1779; in the Durrett collection. Haldimand MSS. Letter of Henry Bird, 
June 9, 1779. As this letter is very important, and gives for the first time 
the Indian side, I print it in Note A almost in full. The accounts of course 
conflict somewhat ; chiefly as to the number of cabins burnt — from five to 
forty, and of horses captured — from thirty to three hundred. They agree 
in all essential points. But as among the whites themselves there is one 
serious question. Logan's admirers, and most Kentucky historians, hold 
Bowman responsible for the defeat; but in reality (see Butler, p. no) 
there seems strong reason to believe that it was simply due to the unex- 
pectedly strong resistance of the Indians. Bird's letter shows, what the 
Kentuckians never suspected, that the attack was a great benefit to them 
in frightening the Indians and stopping a serious inroad. It undoubtedly 
accomplished more than Clark's attack on Piqua next year, for instance. 



350 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Of the whites, nine were killed and two or three wounded; 
the Indians' loss was two killed and five or six wounded. 

The defeat caused intense mortification to the whites; but 
in reality the expedition was of great service to Kentucky, 
though the Kentuckians never knew it. The Detroit people 
had been busily organizing expeditions against Kentucky, 
Captain Henry Bird had been given charge of one, and he had 
just collected two hundred Indians at the Mingo town when 
news of the attack on Chillicothe arrived. Instantly the In- 
dians dissolved in a panic, some returning to defend their 
towns ; others were inclined to beg peace of the Americans. 
So great was their terror that it was found impossible to 
persuade them to make any inroad as long as they deemed 
themselves menaced by a counter-attack of the Kentuckians.^ 

It is true that bands of Mingos, Hurons, Delawares, and 
Shawnees made occasional successful raids against the fron- 
tier, and brought their scalps and prisoners in triumph to 
Detroit,- where they drank such astonishing quantities of 
rum as to incite the indignation of the British commander-in- 
chief.^ But instead of being able to undertake any formi- 
dable expedition against the settlers, the Detroit authorities 
were during this year much concerned for their own safety, 
taking every possible means to provide for the defense, and 
keeping a sharp lookout for any hostile movement of the 
Americans.* 

The incoming settlers were therefore left in comparative 
peace. They built many small palisaded towns, some of which 
proved permanent, while others vanished utterly when the 
fear of the Indians was removed and the families were able 
to scatter out on their farms. At the Falls of the Ohio a 
regular fort was built, armed with cannon and garrisoned 
by Virginia troops,^ who were sent down the river expressly 
to reinforce Clark. The Indians never dared assail this fort; 

* Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, November 20, 1779. 
' Thid. De Peyster to Haldimand, October 20, 1770. 

* Ibid. Haldiman's letter, July 23, 1779. * Ibid. April 8, 1779. 
° One hundred and fifty strong, under Colonel George Slaughter. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 351 

but they ravaged up to its walls, destroying the small stations 
on Bear Grass Creek and scalping settlers and soldiers when 
they wandered far from the protection of the stockade. 

The newcomers of 1779 were destined to begin with a grim 
experience, for the ensuing winter ^ was the most severe ever 
known in the West, and was long recalled by the pioneers as 
the "hard winter." Cold weather set in toward the end of 
November, the storms following one another in unbroken 
succession, while the snow lay deep until the spring. Most of 
the cattle, and very many of the horses, perished; and deer 
and elk were likewise found dead in the woods, or so weak 
and starved that they would hardly move out of the way, 
while the buffalo often came up at nightfall to the yards, 
seeking to associate with the starving herds of the settlers.^ 
The scanty supply of corn gave out, until there was not enough 
left to bake into johnny-cakes on the long boards in front 
of the fire.^ Even at the Falls, where there were stores for 
the troops, the price of corn went up nearly fourfold,* while 
elsewhere among the stations of the interior it could not be 
had at any price, and there was an absolute dearth both of 
salt and of vegetable food, the settlers living for weeks on 
the flesh of the lean wild game,^ especially of the buffalo.^ 
The hunters searched with especial eagerness for the bears 
in the hollow trees, for they alone among the animals kept fat ; 
and the breast of the wild turkey served for bread. '^ Never- 

^ Boone, in his "Narrative," makes a mistake in putting this hard winter 
a year later; all the other authorities are unanimous against him. 

^McAfee MSS. Of the McAfees' horses ten died, and only two sur- 
vived, a brown mare and "a yellow horse called Chickasaw." Exactly a 
hundred years later, in the hard winter of 1879-80, and the still worse 
winter of 1880-81, the settlers on the Yellowstone and the few hunters 
who wintered on the Little Missouri had a similar experience. The buf- 
falo crowded with the few tame cattle round the hay-ricks and log stables ; 
the starving deer and antelope gathered in immense bands in sheltered 
places. Riding from my ranch to a neighbor's I have, in deep snows, 
passed through herds of antelope that would barely move fifty or a hun- 
dred feet out of my way. ^ Ibid. 

^ From fifty dollars (Continental money) a bushel in the fall to one 
hundred and seventy-five in the spring. 

* McAfee MSS. "Boone's "Narrative." 'McAfee MSS. 



352 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

theless, even in the midst of this season of cold and famine, 
the settlers began to take the first steps for the education of 
their children. In this year Joseph Doniphan, whose son long 
afterward won fame in the Mexican war, opened the first 
regular school at Boonesborough,^ and one of the McAfees 
likewise served as a teacher through the winter.^ But from 
the beginning some of the settlers' wives had now and then 
given the children in the forts a few weeks' schooling. 

Through the long, irksome winter the frontiersmen re- 
mained crowded within the stockades. The men hunted, 
while the women made the clothes, of tanned deer-hides, buf- 
falo-wool cloth, and nettle-bark linen. In stormy weather, 
when none could stir abroad, they turned or coopered the 
wooden vessels; for tin cups were as rare as iron forks, and 
the "noggin" was either hollowed out of the knot of a tree, 
or else made with small staves and hoops. ^ Everything was 
of home manufacture — for there was not a store in Ken- 
tucky — and the most expensive domestic products seem to have 
been the hats, made of native fur, mink, coon, fox, wolf, 
and beaver. If exceptionally fine, and of valuable fur, they 
cost five hundred dollars in paper money, which had not at 
that time depreciated a quarter as much in outlying Ken- 
tucky as at the seat of government.* 

As soon as the great snow-drifts began to melt, and thereby 
to produce freshets of unexampled height, the gaunt settlers 
struggled out to their clearings, glad to leave the forts. They 
planted corn, and eagerly watched the growth of the crop; 
and those who hungered after oatmeal or wheaten bread 
planted other grains as well, and apple-seeds and peach-stones. '^ 

As soon as the spring of 1780 opened, the immigrants be- 
gan to arrive more numerously than ever. Some came over 
the Wilderness Road ; among these there were not a few hag- 
gard, half-famished beings, who, having started too late the 
previous fall, had been overtaken by the deep snows, and 

^Historical Magazine, Second Series, vol. VIII. 'McAfee MSS. 

'Ibid. * Marshall, p. 124. "McAfee MSS. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 353 

forced to pass the winter in the iron-bound and desolate val- 
leys of the Alleghanies, subsisting on the carcasses of their 
stricken cattle, and seeing- their weaker friends starve or 
freeze before their eyes. Very many came down the Ohio, in 
flatboats. A good-sized specimen of these huge, unwieldy 
scows was fifty-five feet long, twelve broad, and six deep, 
drawing three feet of water ;^ but the demand was greater than 
the supply, and a couple of dozen people, with half as many 
horses, and all their effects, might be forced to embark on a 
flatboat not twenty-four feet in length." Usually several 
families came together, being bound by some tie of neigh- 
borhood or purpose. Not infrequently this tie was religious, 
for in the back settlements the few churches were almost as 
much social as religious centres. Thus, this spring, a third 
of the congregation of a Low Dutch Reformed Church came 
to Kentucky bodily, to the number of fifty heads of fam- 
ilies, with their wives and children, their beasts of burden 
and pasture, and their household goods; like most bands 
of new immigrants, they suffered greatly from the Indians, 
much more than did the old settlers.^ The following year 
a Baptist congregation came out from Virginia, keeping up 
its organization even while on the road, the preacher holding 
services at every long halt. 

Soon after the rush of spring immigration was at its 
height, the old settlers and the newcomers alike were thrown 
into the utmost alarm by a formidable inroad of Indians, ac- 
companied by French partisans, and led by a British officer. 
De Peyster, a New York Tory of old Knickerbocker family, 
had taken command at Detroit. He gathered the Indians 
around him from far and near, until the expense of sub- 
sidizing these savages became so enormous as to call forth 

^ "Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain, St. John de Creve Coeur," Paris, 
1787, p. 407. He visited Kentucky in 1784. 

^MS. "Journals of Rev. James Smith." Tours in Western country in 
1785-179S (in Colonel Durrett's library). 

" State Department MSS., No. 41, vol. V, Memorials K, L, 1777-1787, 
PP- 95~97, "Petition of Low Dutch Reformed Church," etc. 



354 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

serious complaints from headquarters.^ He constantly en- 
deavored to equip and send out different bands, not only to 
retake the Illinois and Vincennes, but to dislodge Clark from 
the Falls ;^ he was continually receiving scalps and prisoners, 
and by May he had fitted out two thousand warriors to act 
along the Ohio and the Wabash.^ The rapid growth of Ken- 
tucky especially excited his apprehension,* and his main stroke 
was directed against the clusters of wooden forts that were 
springing up south of the Ohio.^ 

Late in May, some six hundred Indians and a few Cana- 
dians, with a couple of pieces of light field-artillery, were 
gathered and put under the command of Captain Henry Bird. 
Following the rivers where practicable, that he might the 
easier carry his guns, he went down the Miami, and, on the 
226. of June, surprised and captured without resistance Rud- 
dle's and Martin's stations, two small stockades on the south 
fork of the Licking.^ But Bird was not one of the few men 
fitted to command such a force as that which followed him ; 
and, contenting himself with the slight success he had won, 
he rapidly retreated to Detroit over the same path by which 
he had advanced. The Indians carried off many horses and 
loaded their prisoners with the plunder, tomahawking those, 
chiefly women and children, who could not keep up with the 
rest ; and Bird could not control them nor force them to show 
mercy to their captives.'^ He did not even get his cannon 
back to Detroit, leaving them at the British store in one of 
the upper Miami towns, in charge of a bombardier. The 

' Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to Guy Johnson, June 30, 1780. 
''Ibid. Haldimand to De Peyster, February 12 and July 6, 1780. 
^ Ibid. De Peyster to Haldimand, June i, 1780. 

* Ibid. March' 8, 1780. ^ Ibid. May 17 to July 19, 1780. 

* He marched overland from the forks of the Licking. Marshall says 
the season was dry and the waters low; but the Bradford MSS. partic- 
ularly declare that Bird only went up the Licking at all because the water- 
courses were so full, and that he had originally intended to attack the 
settlements at the Falls. 

' Collins, Butler, etc. Marshall thinks that if the force could have been 
held together it would have depopulated Kentucky; but this is nonsense, 
for within a week Clark had gathered a very much larger and more 
efficient body of troops. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 355 

bombardier did not prove a very valorous personage, and, on 
the alarm of Clark's advance soon afterward, he permitted 
the Indians to steal his horses, and was forced to bury his 
ordnance in the woods. ^ 

Before this inroad took place, Clark had been planning a 
foray into the Indian country, and the news only made him 
hasten his preparations. In May this adventurous leader had 
performed one of the feats which made him the darling of 
the backwoodsmen. Painted and dressed like an Indian, so 
as to deceive the lurking bands of savages, he and two com- 
panions left the fort he had built on the bank of the Missis- 
sippi, and came through the wilderness to Harrodsburg. They 
lived on the buffaloes they shot, and when they came to the 
Tennessee River, which was then in flood, they crossed the 
swift torrent on a raft of logs bound together with grape- 
vines. At Harrodsburg they found the land court open, and 
thronged with an eager, jostling crowd of settlers and spec- 
ulators, who were waiting to enter lands in the surveyor's 
office. Even the dread of the Indians could not overcome 
in these men's hearts the keen and selfish greed for gain. 
Clark instantly grasped the situation. Seeing that while the 
court remained open he could get no volunteers, he on his 
own responsibility closed it offhand, and proclaimed that it 
would not be opened until after he came back from his expe- 
dition. The speculators grumbled and clamored, but this 
troubled Clark not at all, for he was able to get as many vol- 
unteers as he wished. The discontent, and still more the panic 
over Bird's inroad, made many of the settlers determine to 
flee from the country, but Clark sent a small force to Crab Or- 
chard, at the mouth of the Wilderness Road, the only outlet 
from Kentucky, with instructions to stop all men from leaving 
the country, and to take away their arms if they persisted; 

^ Haldimand MSS. Letter of Bombardier William Homan, August i8, 
1780. He speaks of "the gun" and "the smaller ordnance," presumably 
swivels. It is impossible to give Bird's numbers correctly, for various 
bands of Indians kept joining and leaving him. 



356 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

while four-fifths of all the grown men were drafted, and were 
bidden to gather instantly for a campaign.^ 

He appointed the mouth of the Licking as the place of 
meeting. Thither he brought the troops from the Falls in 
light skiffs he had built for the purpose, leaving behind scarce 
a handful of men to garrison the stockade. Logan went with 
him as second in command. He carried with him a light 
three-pounder gun ; and those of the men who had horses 
marched along the bank beside the flotilla. The only mishap 
that befell the troops happened to McGarry, who had a sub- 
ordinate command. He showed his usual foolhardy obsti- 
nacy by persisting in landing with a small squad of men on 
the north bank of the river, where he was in consequence 
surprised and roughly handled by a few Indians. Nothing 
was done to him because of his disobedience, for the chief 
of such a backwoods levy was the leader, rather than the 
commander, of his men. 

At the mouth of the Licking, Clark met the riflemen from 
the interior stations, among them being Kenton, Harrod, and 
Floyd, and others of equal note. They had turned out almost 
to a man, leaving the women and boys to guard the wooden 
forts until they came back, and had come to the appointed 
place, some on foot or on horseback, others floating and pad- 
dling down the Licking in canoes. They left scanty pro- 
visions with their families, who had to subsist during their 
absence on what game the boys shot, on nettle tops, and a 
few early vegetables ; and they took with them still less. Di- 
viding up their stock, each man had a couple of pounds of 
meal, and some jerked venison or buffalo meat.- 

AU his troops having gathered, to the number of nine 
hundred and seventy, Clark started up the Ohio on the 2d 
of August.^ The skiffs, laden with men, were poled against 
the current, while bodies of footmen and horsemen marched 

* Bradford IVrSS. 

'McAfee MSS. ; the Bradford MS. says six quarts of parched corn. 
'This date and number are those given in the Bradford MS. The Mc- 
Afee MSS. say July ist; but it is impossible that the expedition should 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 357 

along the bank. After going a short distance upstream the 
horses and men were ferried to the farther bank, the boats 
were drawn up on the shore and left with a guard of forty 
men, and the rest of the troops started overland against the 
town of old Chillicothe, fifty or sixty miles distant. The 
three-pounder was carried along on a pack-horse. The march 
was hard, for it rained so incessantly that it was difficult to 
keep the rifles dry. Every night they encamped in a hollow 
square, with the baggage and horses in the middle. 

Chilhcothe, when reached, was found to be deserted. It 
was burned, and the army pushed on to Piqua, a town a few 
miles distant, on the banks of the Little Miami, ^ reaching 
it about ten in the morning of the 8th of August.^ Piqua 
was substantially built, and was laid out in the manner of 
the French villages. The stoutly built log houses stood far 
apart, surrounded by strips of corn-land, and fronting the 
stream ; while a strong blockhouse with loopholed walls stood 
in the middle. Thick woods, broken by small prairies, cov- 
ered the rolling country that lay around the town. 

Clark divided his army into four divisions, taking the 
command of two in person. Giving the others to Logan, 
he ordered him to cross the river above the town ^ and take 
it in the rear, while he himself crossed directly below it and 
assailed it in front. Logan did his best to obey the orders, 
but he could not find a ford, and he marched by degree?, 
nearly three miles upstream, making repeated and vain at- 
tempts to cross; when he finally succeeded, the day was al- 
most done, and the fighting was over. 

Meanwhile, Clark plunged into the river, and crossed at 

have started so soon after Bird's inroad. On July ist, Bird himself was 
probably at the mouth of the Licking. 

2 The Indians so frequently shifted their abode that it is hardly possible 
to identify the exact location of the successive towns called Piqua or 
Pickaway. 

* "Papers relating to G. R. Clark." In the Durrett MSS. at Louisville. 
The account of the death of Joseph Rogers. This settles, by the way, that 
the march was made in August, and not in July. 

' There is some conflict as to whether Logan went up or down stream. 



358 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the head of one of his own two divisions; the other was 
delayed for a short time. Both Simon Girty and his brother 
were in the town, together with several hundred Indian war- 
riors; exactly how many cannot be said, but they were cer- 
tainly fewer in number than the troops composing either wing 
of Clark's army.^ They were surprised by Clark's swift ad- 
vance just as a scouting-party of warriors, who had been sent 
out to watch the whites, were returning to the village. The 
warning was so short that the squaws and children had barely 
time to retreat out of the way. As Clark crossed the stream, 
the warriors left their cabins and formed in some thick timber 
behind them. At the same moment a cousin of Clark's, who 
had been captured by the Indians, and was held prisoner in 
the town, made his escape and ran toward the Americans, 
throwing up his hands, and calling out that he was a white 
man. He was shot, whether by the Americans or the Indians 
none could say. Clark came up and spoke a few words with 
him before he died.^ A long-range skirmish ensued with the 
warriors in the timber ; but on the approach of Clark's second 
division the Indians fell back. The two divisions followed in 

* Haldimand MSS. McKee to De Peyster, August 22, 1780. He was 
told of the battle by the Indians a couple of days after it took place. He 
gives the force of the whites correctly as nine hundred and seventy, forty 
of whom had been left to guard the boats. He says the Indians were 
surprised, and that most of the warriors fled, so that all the fighting was 
done by about seventy, with the two Girtys. This was doubtless not the 
case ; the beaten party in all these encounters was fond of relating the 
valorous deeds of some of its members, who invariably state that they 
would have conquered, had they not been deserted by their associates. 
McKee reported that the Indians could find no trace of the gun-wheels — 
the gun was carried on a pack-horse— and so he thought that the Ken- 
tuckians were forced to leave it behind on their retreat. He put the killed 
of the Kentuckians at the modest number of forty-eight ; and reported the 
belief of Girty and the Indians that "three hundred [of them] would have 
given [Clark's men] a total rout." A very common feat of the small 
frontier historian was to put high praise of his own side in the mouth 
of a foe. Withers, in his "Chronicles of Border Warfare," in speaking of 
this very action, makes Girty withdraw his three hundred warriors on 
account of the valor of Clark's men, remarking that it was "useless to 
fight with fools or madmen." This otters a comical contrast to Girty's 
real opinion, as shown in McKee's letter. 

^Durrett MSS. Volume: "Papers referring to G. R. Clark." The cous- 
in's name was Joseph Rogers, a brother of the commander of the galley. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 359 

pursuit, becoming mingled in disorder. After a slight run- 
ning fight of two hours, the whites lost sight of their foes, 
and wondering what had become of Logan's wing, they gath- 
ered together and marched back toward the river. One of 
the McAfees, captain over a company of riflemen from Salt 
River, was leading, when he discovered an Lidian in a tree- 
top. He and one of his men sought shelter behind the same 
tree ; whereupon he tried to glide behind another, but was shot 
and mortally wounded by the Indian, who was himself in- 
stantly killed. The scattered detachments now sat down to 
listen for the missing wing. After half an hour's silent 
waiting, they suddenly became aware of the presence of a 
body of Indians, who had slipped in between them and the 
town. The backwoodsmen rushed up to the attack, while the 
Indians whooped and yelled defiance. There was a moment's 
heavy firing; but as on both sides the combatants carefully 
sheltered themselves behind tress, there was very little loss; 
and the Indians steadily gave way until they reached the town, 
about two miles distant from the spot where the whites had 
halted. They then made a stand, and, for the first time, there 
occurred some real fighting. The Indians stood stoutly behind 
the loopholed walls of the cabins, and in the blockhouse ; the 
Americans, advancing cautiously and gaining ground inch by 
inch, sufifered much more loss than they inflicted. Late in 
the afternoon Clark managed to bring the three-pounder into 
action, from a point below the town; while the riflemen fired 
at the red warriors as they were occasionally seen running 
from the cabins to take refuge behind the steep bank of the 
river. A few shots from the three-pounder dislodged the 
defenders of the blockhouse; and about sunset the Americans 
closed in, but only to find that their foes had escaped under 
cover of a noisy fire from a few of the hindmost warriors. 
They had run upstream, behind the banks, until they came to 
a small "branch" or brook, by means of which they gained the 
shelter of the forest, where they at once scattered and dis- 
appeared. A few of their stragglers exchanged shots with 



36o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the advance-guard of Logan's wing as it at last came down 
the bank ; this was the only part Logan was able to take in the 
battle. Of the Indians six or eight were slain, whereas the 
whites lost seventeen killed, and a large number wounded.-^ 
Clark destroyed all the houses and a very large quantity of 
corn; and he sent out detachments which destroyed another 
village, and the stores of some British and French-Canadian 
traders. Then the army marched back to the mouth of the 
Licking and disbanded, most of the volunteers having been 
out just twenty-five days.^ 

The Indians were temporarily cowed by their loss and the 
damage they had suffered,^ and especially by the moral effect 
of so formidable a retaliatory foray following immediately on 
the heels of Bird's inroad. Therefore, thanks to Clark, the 
settlements south of the Ohio were but little molested for the 
remainder of the year.^ The bulk of the savages remained 
north of the river, hovering about their burned towns, plan- 
ning to take vengeance in the spring.^ 

Nevertheless small straggling bands of young braves occa- 
sionally came down through the woods ; and although they did 
not attack any fort or any large body of men, they were ever 
on the watch to steal horses, burn lonely cabins, and waylay 
travellers between the stations. They shot the solitary settlers 
who had gone out to till their clearings by stealth, or ambushed 
the boys who were driving in the milk cows or visiting their 

* Bradford MS.; the McAfee MSS. make the loss "15 or 20 Indians" in 
the last assault, and "nearly as many" whites. Boone's narrative says 
seventeen on each side. But McKee says only six Indians were killed and 
three wounded ; and Bombardier Homan, in the letter already quoted, says 
six were killed and two captured, who were afterward slain. The latter 
adds from hearsay that the Americans cruelly slew an Indian woman ; but 
there is not a syllable in any of the other accounts to confirm this, and 
it may be set down as a fiction of the by-no-means-valorous bombardier. 
The bombardier mentions that the Indians in their alarm and anger im- 
mediately burnt all the male prisoners in their villages. 

The Kentucky historians give very scanty accounts of this expedition; 
but as it was of a typical character it is worth while giving in full. The 
McAfee MSS. contain most information about it. 

"Bradford MS. 

' See Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, August 30, 1780. 

* McAfee MSS. ""Virginia State Papers," I, 451. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 361 

lines of traps. It was well for the victim if he was killed at 
once ; otherwise he was bound with hickory withes and driven 
to the distant Indian towns, there to be tortured with hideous 
cruelty and burned to death at the stake. ^ Boone himself suf- 
fered at the hands of one of these parties. He had gone with 
his brother to the Blue Licks, to him a spot always fruitful 
of evil ; and being ambushed by the Indians, his brother was 
killed, and he himself was only saved by his woodcraft and 
speed of foot. The Indians had with them a tracking-dog, by 
the aid of which they followed his trail for three miles, until 
he halted, shot the dog, and thus escaped.- 

During this comparatively peaceful fall the settlers fared 
well, though the men were ever on the watch for Indian war- 
parties, while the mothers, if their children were naughty, 
frightened them into quiet with the threat that the Shawnees 
would catch them. The widows and the fatherless were cared 
for by the other families of the different stations. The season 
of want and scarcity had passed forever ; from thenceforth on 
there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail; 
not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there 
was also wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, tur- 
nips, and the like. Sugar was made by tapping the maple- 
trees ; but salt was bought at a very exorbitant price at the 
Falls, being carried down in boats from the old Redstone 
fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer 
settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the 
young men and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending 
their labor by an hour or two's search for wild plums. The 
men killed all the game they wished, and so there was no lack 
of meat. They also surveyed the land and tended the stock — 
cattle, horses, and hogs — which throve and multiplied out on 
the rang^e, fattening on the cane and large white buffalo-clover, 
At odd times the men and boys visited their lines of traps. 
Furs formed almost the only currency, except a little paper 

* McAfee MSS. The last was an incident that happened to a young man 
named McCoun, on March 8, 1781. ' Boone's "Narrative." 



^(^2 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

money; but as there were no stores west of the mountains, 
this was all that was needed, and each settlement raised most 
things for itself, and procured the rest by barter. 

The law-courts were as yet very little troubled, each small 
community usually enforcing a rough-and-ready justice of its 
own. On a few of the streams log dams were built, and tub- 
mills started. In Harrodsburg a toll-mill was built in 1779. 
The owner used to start it grinding, and then go about his 
other business ; once on returning he found a large wild turkey 
gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was 
able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands. The 
people all worked together in cultivating their respective lands, 
coming back to the fort before dusk for supper. They would 
then call on any man who owned a fiddle and spend the eve- 
ning, with interludes of singing and story-telling, in dancing 
— an amusement they considered as only below hunting. On 
Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the cate- 
chism; but in spite of the presence of not a few devout 
Baptists and Presbyterians there was little chance for general 
observance of religious forms. Ordinary conversation was 
limited to such subjects as bore on the day's doings ; the gamie 
that had been killed, the condition of the crops, the plans of 
the settlers for the immediate future, the accounts of the last 
massacre by the savages, or the rumor that Indian sign had 
been seen in the neighborhood; all interspersed with much 
banter, practical joking, and rough, good-humored fun. The 
scope of conversation was of necessity narrowly limited even 
for the backwoods ; for there was little chance to discuss reli- 
gion and politics, the two subjects that the average backwoods- 
man regards as the staples of deep conversation. The deeds 
of the Indians, of course, formed the one absorbing topic.^ 

An abortive separatist movement was the chief political 
sensation of this summer. Many hundreds and even thou- 
sands of settlers from the backwoods districts of various 

'For all this, sec McAfee MSS. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 363 

States had come to Kentucky, and some even to Illinois, and 
a number of them were greatly discontented with the Vir- 
ginian rule. They deemed it too difficult to get justice when 
they were so far from the seat of government; they objected 
to the land being granted to any but actual settlers; and they 
protested against being taxed, asserting that they did not 
know whether the country really belonged to Virginia or the 
United States. Accordingly, they petitioned the Continental 
Congress that Kentucky and Illinois combined might be made 
into a separate State ; ^ but no heed was paid to their request, 
nor did their leading men join in making it. 

In November, the Virginia legislature divided Kentucky 
into the three counties of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fayette, 
appointing for each a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a sur- 
veyor. The three colonels, who were also justices of the coun- 
ties,- were, in their order, John Floyd — whom Clark described 
as "a soldier, a gentleman and a scholar," ^ — Benjamin Logan, 
and John Todd. Clark, whose station was at the Falls of the 
Ohio, was brigadier-general and commander over all. Boone 
was lieutenant-colonel under Todd ; and their county of Fay- 
ette had for its surveyor Thomas Marshall,* the father of the 
great chief justice, whose services to the United States stand 
on a plane with those of Alexander Hamilton.^ 

The winter passed quietly away, but as soon as the snow 
was off the ground in 1781, the Indians renewed their rav- 
ages. Early in the winter Clark went to Virginia to try to 
get an army for an expedition against Detroit. He likewise 
applied to Washington for assistance. Washington fully en- 
tered into his plans, and saw their importance. He would 
gladly have rendered him every aid. But he could do noth- 

^ State Department MSS., No. 48. See Note B. As containing an 
account of the first, and hitherto entirely unnoticed, separatist movement 
in Kentucky, I give the petition entire. 

^ Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. II, p. 47. 

^ Ibid., vol. I, p. 452. ■'Collins, I, 20. 

■* Roughly, Fayette embraced the territory north and northeast of the 
Kentucky River, Jefferson that between Green River and the lower Ken- 
tucky, and Lincoln the rest of the present State. 



364 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ing, because of the impotence to which the central authority, 
the Continental Congress, had been reduced by the selfishness 
and supine indifference of the various States — Virginia among 
the number. He wrote Clark: "It is out of my power to send 
any reinforcements to the westward. If the States would fill 
their continental battalions we should be able to oppose a 
regular and permanent force to the enemy in every quarter. 
If they will not, they must certainly take measures to defend 
themselves by their militia, however expensive and ruinous 
the system." ^ It was impossible to state with more straight- 
forward clearness the fact that Kentucky owed the unpro- 
tected condition in which she was left to the divided or 
States'-rights system of government that then existed; and 
that she would have had ample protection — and, incidentally, 
greater liberty — had the central authority been stronger. 

At last, Clark was empowered to raise the men he wished, 
and he passed and repassed from Fort Pitt to the Falls of the 
Ohio and thence to the Illinois in the vain effort to get troops. 
The inertness and short-sightedness of the frontiersmen, above 
all the exhaustion of the States, and their timid selfishness 
and inability to enforce their commands, baffled all of Clark's 
efforts. In his letters to Washington he bitterly laments his 
enforced dependence upon "persuasive arguments to draw the 
inhabitants of the country into the field." " The Kentuckians 
were anxious to do all in their power, but of course only a 

^ State Department MSS., No. 147, vol. V. Reports of Board of War. 
Letter of Washington, June 8, 1781. It is impossible to study any part 
of the Revolutionary struggle without coming to the conclusion that Wash- 
ington would have ended it in half the time it actually lasted had the 
jangling States and their governments, as well as the Continental Con- 
gress, backed him up half as effectively as the Confederate people and 
government backed up Lee, or as the Northerners and the Washington 
administration backed up McClellan — still more, as they backed up Grant. 
The whole of our Revolutionary history is a running commentary on the 
anarchic weakness of disunion, and the utter lack of liberty that follows 
in its train. 

* State Department MSS. Letters to Washington, vol. XLIX, p. 235, 
May 21, 1781. The entire history of the Western operations shows the 
harm done by the weak and divided system of government that obtained 
at the time of the Revolution, and emphasizes our good fortune in replac- 
ing it by a strong and permanent Union. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 365 

comparatively small number could be spared for so long a 
campaign from their scattered stockades. Around Pittsburg, 
where he hoped to raise the bulk of his forces, the frontiers- 
men were split into little factions by their petty local rivalries, 
the envy their leaders felt of Clark himself, and the never- 
ending jealousies and bickerings between the Virginians and 
Pennsylvanians.^ 

The fort at the Falls, where Clark already had some troops, 
was appointed as a gathering-place for the different detach- 
ments that were to join him, but, from one cause or another, 
all save one or two failed to appear. Most of them did not 
even start, and one body of Pennsylvanians that did go met 
with an untoward fate. This was a party of a hundred West- 
moreland men under their county lieutenant, Colonel Archi- 
bald Loughry. They started down the Ohio in flatboats, but 
having landed on a sand-bar to butcher and cook a buffalo 
that they had killed, they were surprised by an equal number 
of Indians under Joseph Brant, and being huddled together, 
were all slain or captured with small loss to their assailants." 
Many of the prisoners, including Loughry himself, were after- 
ward murdered in cold blood by the Indians. 

During this year the Indians continually harassed the whole 
frontier, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, ravaging the settle- 
ments and assailing the forts in great bands of five or six 
hundred warriors.^ The Continental troops stationed at Fort 

* Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," I, pp. 502, 597, etc.; II, pp. 108, 
116, 264, 345. The Kentuckians were far more eager for action than the 
Pennsylvanians. 

^At Loughry's Creek, some ten miles below the mouth of the Miami, 
on August 24, 1781. "Diary of Captain Isaac Anderson," quoted in Indiana 
Historical Society Pamphlets, No. 4, by Charles Martindale, Indianapolis, 
1888. Collins, whose accuracy by no means equals his thirst for pure 
detail, puts this occurrence just a year too late. Brant's force was part 
of a body of several hundred Indians, gathered to resist Clark. 

^It is most difficult to get at the number of the Indian parties; they 
were sometimes grossly exaggerated and sometimes hopelessly under- 
estimated. The commanders at the unmolested forts and the statesmen 
who stayed at home only saw those members of the tribes who claimed 
to be peaceful, and invariably put the number of warriors on the war-patli 
at far too low a figure. Madison's estimates, for instance, were very much 
out of the way, yet many modern critics follow him. 



366 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Pitt were reduced to try every expedient to procure supplies. 
Though it was evident that the numbers of the hostile Indians 
had largely increased, and that even such tribes as the Dela- 
wares, who had been divided, were now united against the 
Americans, nevertheless, because of the scarcity of food, a 
party of soldiers had to be sent into the Indian country to 
kill buffalo, that the garrison might have meat.^ The Indians 
threatened to attack the fort itself, as well as the villages it 
protected; passing around and on each side, their war-parties 
ravaged the country in its rear, distressing greatly the people ; 
and from this time until peace was declared with Great Brit- 
ain, and indeed until long after that event, the westernmost 
Pennsylvanians knew neither rest nor safety.^ Among many 
others the forted village at Wheeling was again attacked. But 
its most noteworthy siege occurred during the succeeding sum- 
mer, when Simon Girty, with fife and drum, led a large band 
of Indians and Detroit rangers against it, only to be beaten 
ofif. The siege was rendered memorable by the heroism of a 
girl, who carried powder from the stockade to an outlying 
log house, defended by four men; she escaped unscathed be- 
cause of her very boldness, in spite of the fire from so many 
rifles, and to this day the mountaineers speak of her deed.^ 

^ State Department MSS., No. 147, vol. VI. Reports of Board of War. 
March 15, 1781. 

^ Ibid., No. 148, vol. I, January 4, 1781 ; No. 149, vol. I, August 6, 1782; 
No. 149, vol. II, p. 461 ; No. 149, vol. Ill, p. 183. Fedrral garrisons were 
occasionally established at, or withdrawn from, other posts on the upper 
Ohio besides Fort Pitt ; but their movements had no permanent value, 
and only require chronicling by the local. State, or county historians. In 
1778, Fort RIcIntosh was built at Beaver Creek, on the north bank of the 
Ohio, and Fort Laurens seventy miles toward the interior. The latter was 
soon abandoned ; the former was in Pennsylvania, and a garrison was kept 
there. 

" See De Haas, 263-281, for the fullest and probably most accurate 
account of the siege ; as already explained, he is the most trustworthy of 
the border historians. But it is absolutely impossible to find out the real 
facts concerning the sieges of Wheeling; it is not quite certain even 
whether there were two or three. The testimony as to whether the heroine 
of the powder feat was Betty Zane or Molly Scott is hopelessly conflict- 
ing; we do not know which of the two brothers Girty was in command, 
nor whether either was present at the first attack. Much even of De 
Haas's account is, to put it mildly, greatly embellished ; as, for instance, 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 367 

It would be tiresome and profitless to so much as name the 
many different stations that were attacked. In their main 
incidents all the various assaults were alike, and that made 
this summer on McAfee's station may be taken as an illus- 
tration. 

The McAfees brought their wives and children to Ken- 
tucky in the fall of '79, and built a little stockaded hamlet on 
the banks of Salt River, six or seven miles from Harrodsburg. 
Some relatives and friends joined them, but their station was 
small and weak. The stockade, on the south side, was very 
feeble, and there were but thirteen men, besides the women 
and children, in garrison; but they were strong and active, 
good woodsmen, and excellent marksmen. The attack was 
made on May 4, 1781.^ 

The Indians lay all night at a corn-crib three-quarters of 
a mile distant from the stockade. The settlers, though one 
of their number had been carried off two months before, still 
continued their usual occupations. But they were very watch- 
ful and always kept a sharp lookout, driving the stock inside 
the yard at night. On the day in question, at dawn, it was 
noticed that the dogs and cattle betrayed symptoms of uneasi- 
ness ; for all tame animals dreaded the sight or smell of an 
Indian as they did that of a wild beast, and by their alarm 
often warned the settlers and thus saved their lives. 

In this case the warning was unheeded. At daybreak the 
stock were turned loose and four of the men went outside the 
fort. Two began to clear a patch of turnip-land about a hun- 
dred and fifty yards off, leaving their guns against a tree 

his statement about the cannon (a small French gun, thrown into the 
Monongahela when Fort Du Quesne was abandoned, and fished up by a 
man named Naly, who was in swimming), which he asserts cut "a wide 
passage" through the "deep columns" of the savages. There is no reason 
to suppose that the Indians suffered a serious loss. Wheeling was a place 
of little strategic importance, and its fall would not have produced any 
far-reaching effects. 

' McAfee MSS. This is the date given in the 'MS. "Autobiography of 
Robert McAfee"; the MS. "History of First Settlement on Salt River" 
says May 6th. ^ I draw my account from these two sources; the discrep- 
ancies are trivial. 



368 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

close at hand. The other two started toward the corn-crib, 
with a horse and bag. After going a quarter of a mile, the 
path dipped into a hollow, and here they suddenly came on 
the Indians, advancing stealthily toward the fort. At the first 
fire one of the men was killed, and the horse, breaking loose, 
galloped back to the fort. The other man likewise turned and 
ran toward home, but was confronted by an Indian who 
leaped into the path directly ahead of him. The two were so 
close together that the muzzles of their guns crossed, and both 
pulled trigger at once ; the Indian's gun missed fire and he fell 
dead in his tracks. Continuing his flight, the survivor reached 
the fort in safety. 

When the two men in the turnip-patch heard the firing 
they seized their guns and ran toward the point of attack, 
but seeing the number of the assailants they turned back to 
the fort, trying to drive the frightened stock before them. 
The Indians coming up close, they had to abandon the at- 
tempt, although most of the horses and some of the cattle 
got safely home. One of the men reached the gate ahead of 
the Indians; the other was cut off, and took a roundabout 
route through the woods. He speedily distanced all of his 
pursuers but one; several times he turned to shoot the latter, 
but the Indian always took prompt refuge behind a tree, and 
the white man then renewed his flight. At last he reached a 
fenced orchard, on the border of the cleared ground round 
the fort. Throwing himself over the fence he lay still among 
the weeds on the other side. In a minute or two the pursuer, 
running up, cautiously peered over the fence, and was in- 
stantly killed ; he proved to be a Shawnee chief, painted, and 
decked with many silver armlets, rings, and brooches. The 
fugitive then succeeded in making his way into the fort. 

The settlers inside the stockade had sprung to arms the 
moment the first guns were heard. The men fired on the ad- 
vancing Indians, while the women and children ran bullets and 
made ready the rifle-patches. Every one displayed the coolest 
determination, except one man who hid under a bed, until 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 369 

found by his wife, whereupon he was ignominiously dragged 
out and made to run bullets with the women. 

As the Indians advanced they shot down most of the cattle 
and hogs and some of the horses that were running frantically 
round the stockade; and they likewise shot several dogs that 
had sallied out to help their masters. They then made a rush 
on the fort, but were driven ofif at once, one of their number 
being killed and several badly hurt, while but one of the de- 
fenders was wounded, and he but slightly. After this they 
withdrew to cover and began a desultory firing, which lasted 
for some time. 

Suddenly a noise like distant thunder came to the ears of 
the men in the fort. It was the beat of horse-hoofs. In a 
minute or two forty-five horsemen, headed by McGarry, ap- 
peared on the road leading from Harrodsburg, shouting and 
brandishing their rifles as they galloped up. The morning 
was so still that the firing had been heard a very long way; 
and a band of mounted riflemen had gathered in hot haste to 
go to the relief of the beleaguered stockade. 

The Indians, whooping defiance, retired ; while McGarry 
halted a moment to allow the rescued settlers to bridle their 
horses — saddles were not thought of. The pursuit was then 
begun at full speed. At the ford of a small creek near by, 
the rearmost Indians turned and fired at the horsemen, killing 
one and wounding another, while a third had his horse mired 
down, and was left behind. The main body was overtaken at 
the corn-crib, and a running fight followed ; the whites leaving 
their horses and both sides taking shelter behind the tree 
trunks. Soon two Indians were killed, and the others scat- 
tered in every direction, while the victors returned in triumph 
to the station. 

It is worthy of notice that though the Indians were de- 
feated, and though they were pitted against first-class rifle- 
shots, they yet had but five men killed and a very few wounded. 
They rarely suffered a heavy loss in battle with the whites, 
even when beaten in the open or repulsed from a fort. They 



370 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

would not stand heavy punishment, and in attacking a fort 
generally relied upon a single headlong rush, made under 
cover of darkness or as a surprise; they tried to unnerve their 
antagonists by the sudden fury of their onslaught and the 
deafening accompaniment of whoops and yells. If they began 
to suffer much loss they gave up at once, and if pursued scat- 
tered in every direction, each man for himself, and, owing to 
their endurance, woodcraft, and skill in hiding, usually got 
off with marvelously little damage. At the outside a dozen 
of their men might be killed in the pursuit by such of the 
vengeful backwoodsmen as were exceptionally fleet of foot. 
The northwestern tribes at this time appreciated thoroughly 
that their marvelous fighting qualities were shown to best 
advantage in the woods, and neither in the defense nor in 
the assault of fortified places. They never cooped themselves 
in stockades to receive an attack from the whites, as was done 
by the Massachusetts Algonquins in the seventeenth century, 
and by the Creeks at the beginning of the nineteenth; and it 
was only when behind defensive works from which they could 
not retreat that the forest Indians ever suffered heavily when 
defeated by the whites. On the other hand, the defeat of the 
average white force was usually followed by a merciless 
slaughter. Skilled backwoodsmen scattered out, Indian fash- 
ion, but their less skilful or more panic-struck brethren, and all 
regulars or ordinary militia, kept together from a kind of blind 
feeling of safety in companionship, and in consequence their 
nimble and ruthless antagonists destroyed them at their ease. 
Still, the Indian war-parties were often checked or scat- 
tered ; and occasionally one of them received some signal dis- 
comfiture. Such was the case with a band that went up the 
Kanawha valley just as Clark was descending the Ohio on 
his way to the Illinois. Finding the fort at the mouth of the 
Kanawha too strong to be carried, they moved on up the 
river toward the Greenbriar settlements, their chiefs shouting 
threateningly to the people in the fort, and taunting them with 
the impending destruction of their friends and kindred. But 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 371 

two young men in the stockade forthwith dressed and painted 
themselves hke Indians, that they might escape notice even if 
seen, and speeding through the woods reached the settlements 
first and gave warning. The settlers took refuge on a farm 
where there was a blockhouse with a stockaded yard. The In- 
dians attacked in a body at daybreak when the door was opened, 
thinking to rush into the house ; but they were beaten off, and 
paid dear for their boldness, for seventeen of them were left 
dead in the yard, besides the killed and wounded whom they 
carried away.^ In the same year a blockhouse was attacked 
while the children were playing outside. The Indians in their 
sudden rush killed one settler, wounded four, and actually got 
inside the house; yet three were killed or disabled, and they 
were driven out by the despairing fury of the remaining 
whites, the women fighting together with the men. Then the 
savages instantly fled, but they had killed and scalped, or car- 
ried off, ten of the children. Be it remembered that these 
instances are taken at random from among" hundreds of 
others, extending over a series of years longer than the aver- 
age life of a generation. 

The Indians warred with the odds immeasurably in their 
favor. The Ohio was the boundary between their remaining 
hunting-grounds and the lands where the whites had settled. 
In Kentucky alone this frontier was already seventy miles in 
length.^ Beyond the river stretched the frowning forest, to 
the Indians a sure shield in battle, a secure haven in disaster, 

^ McKee was the commander at the fort ; the blockhouse was owned by 
Colonel Andrew Donelly ; Hanlon and Prior were the names of the two 
young men. This happened in May, 1778. For the anecdotes of personal 
prowess in this chapter, see De Haas, or else Kercheval, McClung, Dodd- 
ridge, and the fifty other annalists of those Western wars, who repeat 
many of the same stories. All relate facts of undoubted authenticity and 
wildly improbable tales, resting solely on tradition, with exactly the same 
faith. The chronological order of these anecdotes being unimportant, I 
liave grouped them here. It must always be rememl)ered that both the 
men and the incidents described are interesting chiefly as examples ; the 
old annalists give many hundreds of such anecdotes, and there must have 
been thousands more that they did not relate. 

^"Virginia State Papers," I, 437. Letter of Colonel John Floyd. The 
Kentuckians, he notices, trust militia more than they do regulars. 



2,-^2 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

an impenetrable mask from behind which to plan attack. 
Clark, from his post at the Falls, sent out spies and scouts 
along the banks of the river, and patrolled its waters with his 
gunboat ; but it was absolutely impossible to stop all the forays 
or to tell the point likely to be next struck. A war-party 
starting from the wigwam towns would move silently down 
through the woods, cross the Ohio at any point, and stealthily 
and rapidly traverse the settlements, its presence undiscovered 
until the deeds of murder and rapine were done, and its track 
marked by charred cabins and the ghastly, mutilated bodies of 
men, women, and children. 

If themselves assailed, the warriors fought desperately and 
efifectively. They sometimes attacked bodies of troops, but 
always by ambush or surprise; and they much preferred to 
pounce on unprepared and unsuspecting surveyors, farmers, 
or wayfarers, or to creep up to solitary, outlying cabins. They 
valued the scalps of women and children as highly as those of 
men. Striking a sudden blow, where there was hardly any 
possibility of loss to themselves, they instantly moved on to 
the next settlement, repeating the process again and again. 
Tireless, watchful, cautious, and rapid, they covered great dis- 
tances, and their stealth and the mystery of their coming and 
going added to the terror produced by the horrible nature of 
their ravages. When pursued, they dexterously covered their 
trail, and started homeward across a hundred leagues of track- 
less wilderness. The pursuers almost of necessity went slower, 
for they had to puzzle out the tracks; and after a certain 
number of days either their food gave out or they found 
themselves too far from home, and were obliged to return. 
In most instances the pursuit was vain. Thus a party of 
twenty savages might make a war trail some hundreds of miles 
in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying off a dozen 
women and children, and throwing a number of settlements, 
with perhaps a total population of a thousand souls, into a 
rage of terror and fury, with a loss to themselves of but one 
or two men killed and wounded. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 373 

Throughout the summer of 1781 the settlers were scourged 
by an unbroken series of raids of this kind. In August, 
McKee, Brant, and other Tory and Indian leaders assembled 
on the Miami an army of perhaps a thousand warriors. They 
were collected to oppose Clark's intended march to Detroit; 
for the British leaders were well aware of Clark's intention, 
and trusted to the savages to frustrate it if he attempted to 
put it into execution. Brant went off for a scout with a hun- 
dred warriors, and destroyed Loughry's party of Westmore- 
land men, as already, related, returning to the main body after 
having done so. The fickle savages were much elated by this 
stroke, but instead of being inspired to greater efforts, took 
the view that the danger of invasion was now over. After 
much persuasion, Brant, McKee, and the captain of the De- 
troit Rangers, Thompson, persuaded them to march toward 
the Falls. On September 9th, they were within thirty miles 
of their destination, and halted to send out scouts. Two pris- 
oners were captured, from whom it was learned that Clark 
had abandoned his proposed expedition.^ Instantly the In- 
dians began to disband, some returning to their homes, and 
others scattering out to steal horses and burn isolated cabins. 
Nor could the utmost efforts of their leaders keep them 
together. They had no wish to fight Clark unless it was 
absolutely necessary in order to save their villages and crops 
from destruction; and they much preferred plundering on 
their own account. However, a couple of hundred Hurons 
and Miamis, under Brant and McKee, were kept together, and 
moved southward between the Kentucky and Salt rivers, in- 
tending "to attack some of the small forts and infest the 
roads." - About the middle of the month they fell in with a 
party of settlers led by Squire Boone. 

Squire Boone had built a fort, some distance from any 
other, and when rumors of a great Indian invasion reached 

' Haldimand MSS. Captain A. Thompson to De Peyster, September 26, 
1781. 
'Ibid. Captain A. McKee to De Peyster, September 26, 1781. 



374 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

him, he determined to leave it and join the stations on Bear 
Grass Creek. When he reached Long Run, with his men, 
women, and children, cattle, and household goods, he stum- 
bled against the two hundred warriors of McKee and Brant. 
His people were scattered to the four winds, with the loss of 
many scalps and all their goods and cattle. The victors 
camped on the ground with the intention of ambushing any 
party that arrived to bury the dead; for they were confident 
some of the settlers would come for this purpose. Nor were 
they disappointed; for next morning Floyd, the county lieu- 
tenant, with twenty-five men, made his appearance. Floyd 
marched so quickly that he came on the Indians before they 
were prepared to receive him. A smart skirmish ensued; but 
the whites were hopelessly outnumbered, and were soon beaten 
and scattered, with a loss of twelve or thirteen men. Floyd 
himself, exhausted, and with his horse shot, would have been 
captured had not another man, one Samuel Wells, who was 
excellently mounted, seen his plight. Wells reined in, leaped 
off his horse, and, making Floyd ride, he ran beside him and 
both escaped. The deed was doubly noble, because the men 
had previously been enemies.^ The frontiersmen had made 
a good defense in spite of the tremendous odds against them, 
and had slain four of their opponents, three Hurons and a 
Miami.^ Among the former was the head chief, a famous 
warrior; his death so discouraged the Indians that they 
straightway returned home with their scalps and plunder, re- 

^ Marshall, I, ii6. Floyd had previously written Jefferson ("Virginia 
State Papers," I, 47) that in his country there were but three hundred 
and fifty-four militia between sixteen and fifty-four years old; that all 
people were living in forts, and that forty-seven of the settlers of all ages 
had been killed, and many wounded, since January ; so his defeat was a 
serious blow. 

^ tlaldimand MSS. Thompson's letter; McKee only mentions the three 
Hurons. As already explained, the partisan leaders were apt, in enumer- 
ating the Indian losses, only to give such as had occurred in their own 
particular bands. Marshall makes the fight take place in April; the ITaldi- 
mand MSS. show that it was in September. Marshall is as valuable for 
early Kentucky history as Haywood for the corresponding periods in Ten- 
nessee ; but both one and the other write largely from tradition, and can 
never be followed when they contradict contemporary reports. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 375 

sisting McKee's entreaty that they would first attack Boones- 
borough. 

One war-party carried off Logan's family ; but Logan, fol- 
lowing swiftly after, came on the savages so suddenly that he 
killed several of their number, and rescued all his own people 
unhurt.^ 

Often French-Canadians, and more rarely Tories, accom- 
panied these little bands of murderous plunderers " — besides 
the companies of Detroit Rangers who went with the large 
war-parties — and they were all armed and urged on by the 
British at Detroit. One of the official British reports to Lord 
George Germain, made on October 23d of this year, deals with 
the Indian war-parties employed against the northwestern 
frontier. "Many smaller Indian parties have been very suc- 
cessful. ... It would be endless and difficult to enumerate 
to your Lordship the parties that are continually employed 
upon the back settlements. From the Illinois country to the 
frontiers of New York there is a continual succession . . . the 
perpetual terror and losses of the inhabitants will I hope oper- 
ate powerfully in our favor" ^ so runs the letter. At the 
same time the British commander in Canada was pointing 
out to his subordinate at Detroit that the real danger to Brit- 
ish rule arose from the extension of the settlements westward, 
and that this the Indians could prevent ; in other words, the 
savages were expressly directed to make war on non-combat- 
ants, for it was impossible to attack a settlement without 
attacking the women and children therein.^ In return, the 

^Bradford MSS. 

^ At this very time a small band that had captured a family in the 
Kanawha valley were pursued fifty miles, overtaken, several killed and 
wounded, and the prisoners recaptured, by Colonel Andrew Donelly, men- 
tioned in a previous note ; it consisted of two French and eight Indians. 
"Virginia State Papers," I, 6oi. 

^ See full copy of the letter in Mr. Martindale's excellent pamphlet, 
above quoted. 

*Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to De Peyster, June 24, 1781. Through- 
out the letters of the British officers at and near Detroit there are constant 
allusions to scalps being brought in ; but not one word, as far as I have 
seen, to show that the Indians were ever reproved because many of the 
scalps were those of women and children. It is only fair to say, however, 



376 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

frontiersmen speedily grew to regard both British and Indians 
with the same venomous and indiscriminate anger. 

In the writings of the early annalists of these Indian wars 
are to be found the records of countless deeds of individual 
valor and cowardice, prowess and suffering, of terrible woe in 
time of disaster and defeat, and of the glutting of ferocious 
vengeance in the days of triumphant reprisal. They contain 
tales of the most heroic courage and of the vilest poltroonery; 
for the iron times brought out all that was best and all that 
was basest in the human breast. We read of husbands leav- 
ing their wives, and women their children, to the most dread- 
ful of fates, on the chance that they themselves might thereby 
escape; and, on the other hand, we read again and again of 
the noblest acts of self-sacrifice, where the man freely gave 
his life for that of his wife or child, his brother or his friend. 
Many deeds of unflinching loyalty are recorded, but very, 
very few where magnanimity was shown to a fallen foe. The 
women shared the stern qualities of the men; often it hap- 
pened that when the house-owner had been shot down, his 
wife made good the defense of the cabin with rifle or with 
axe, hewing valiantly at the savages who tried to break 
through the door, or dig under the puncheon floor, or, per- 
haps, burst down through the roof or wide chimney. Many 
hundreds of these tales could be gathered together; one or 
two are worth giving, not as being unique, but rather as sam- 
ples of innumerable others of the same kind. 

In those days^ there lived beside the Ohio, in extreme 
northwestern Virginia, two tall brothers, famed for their 
strength, agility, and courage. They were named Adam and 
Andrew Poe. In the summer of '8i a party of seven Wyan- 
dots or Hurons came into their settlement, burned some cabins, 

that there are several instances of the commanders exhorting the Indians 
to be merciful — which was a waste of breath — and several other instances 
where successful efforts were made to stop the use of torture. The Brit- 
ish officers were generally personally humane to their prisoners. 

^1781, De Haas; Doddridge, whom the other compilers follow, gives a 
wrong date (1782), and reverses the parts the two brothers played. 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 377 

and killed one of the settlers. Immediately eight backwoods- 
men started in chase of the marauders; among them were the 
two Poes. 

The Wyandots were the bravest of all the Indian tribes, 
the most dangerous in battle, and the most merciful in victory, 
rarely torturing their prisoners ; the backwoodsmen respected 
them for their prowess more than they did any other tribe, 
and, if captured, esteemed themselves fortunate to fall into 
Wyandot hands. These seven warriors were the most famous 
and dreaded of the whole tribe. They included four brothers, 
one being the chief Bigfoot, who was of gigantic strength and 
stature, the champion of all, their most fearless and redoubt- 
able fighter, yet their very confidence ruined them, for they 
retreated in a leisurely manner, caring little whether they 
were overtaken or not, as they had many times worsted the 
whites, and did not deem them their equals in battle. 

The backwoodsmen followed the trail swiftly all day long, 
and, by the help of the moon, late into the night. Early next 
morning they again started and found themselves so near the 
Wyandots that Andrew Poe turned aside and went down to 
the bed of a neighboring stream, thinking to come up behind 
the Indians while they were menaced by his comrades in front. 
Hearing a low murmur, he crept up through the bushes to a 
jutting rock on the brink of the watercourse, and, peering 
cautiously over, he saw two Indians beneath him. They were 
sitting under a willow, talking in deep whispers; one was an 
ordinary warrior, the other, by his gigantic size, was evidently 
the famous chief himself. Andrew took steady aim at the 
big chief's breast and pulled trigger. The rifle flashed in the 
pan; and the two Indians sprang to their feet with a deep 
grunt of surprise. For a second all three stared at one an- 
other. Then Andrew sprang over the rock, striking the big 
Indian's breast with a shock that bore him to the earth ; while 
at the moment of alighting, he threw his arm round the small 
Indian's neck, and all three rolled on the ground together. 

At this instant they heard sharp firing in the woods above 



378 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

them. The rest of the whites and Indians had discovered one 
another at the same time. A furious but momentary fight 
ensued ; three backwoodsmen and four Indians were killed out- 
right, no other white being hurt, while the single remaining 
red warrior made his escape, though badly wounded. But 
the three men who were struggling for life and death in the 
ravine had no time to pay heed to outside matters. For a mo- 
ment Andrew kept down both his antagonists, wdio were 
stunned by the shock; but before he could use his knife the 
big Indian wrapped him in his arms and held him as if in a 
vise. This enabled the small Indian to wrest himself loose, 
when the big chief ordered him to run for his tomahawk, 
which lay on the sand ten feet away, and to kill the white man 
as he lay powerless in the chief's arms. Andrew could not 
break loose, but, watching his chance, as the small Indian came 
up, he kicked him so violently in the chest that he knocked the 
tomahawk out of his hand and sent him staggering into the 
water. Thereat the big chief grunted out his contempt, and 
thundered at the small Indian a few words that Andrew could 
not understand. The small Indian again approached and after 
making several feints, struck with the tomahawk, but Andrew 
dodged and received the blow on his wrist instead of his head ; 
and the wound, though deep, was not disabling. By a sudden 
and mighty effort he now shook himself free from the giant, 
and, snatching up a loaded rifle from the sand, shot the small 
Indian as he rushed on him. But at that moment the larger 
Indian, rising up, seized him and hurled him to the ground. 
He was on his feet in a second, and the two grappled furiously, 
their knives being lost ; Andrew's activity and skill as a wres- 
tler and boxer making amends for his lack of strength. 
Locked in each other's arms they rolled into the water. Here 
each tried to drown the other, and Andrew catching the chief 
by the scalp-lock held his head under the water until his faint 
struggles ceased. Thinking his foe dead, he loosed his grip 
to get at his knife, but, as Andrew afterward said, the Indian 
had only been "playing 'possum," and in a second the struggle 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 379 

was renewed. Both combatants rolled into deep water, when 
they separated and struck out for the shore. The Indian 
proved the best swimmer, and ran up to the rifle that lay on 
the sand, whereupon Andrew turned to swim out into the 
stream, hoping to save his life by diving. At this moment 
his brother Adam appeared on the bank, and seeing Andrew 
covered with blood and swimming rapidly away, mistook him 
for an Indian, and shot him in the shoulder. Immediately 
afterward he saw his real antagonist. Both had empty guns 
and the contest became one as to who could beat the other in 
loading, the Indian exclaiming: "Who load first, shoot first!" 
The chief got his powder down first, but, in hurriedly draw- 
ing out his ramrod, it slipped through his fingers and fell in 
the river. Seeing that it was all over, he instantly faced his 
foe, pulled open the bosom of his shirt, and the next moment 
received the ball fair in his breast. Adam, alarmed for his 
brother, who by this time could barely keep himself afloat, 
rushed into the river to save him, not heeding Andrew's re- 
peated cries to take the big Indian's scalp. Meanwhile the 
dying chief, resolute to save the long locks his enemies coveted 
— always a point of honor among the red men — painfully 
rolled himself into the stream. Before he died he reached the 
deep water, and the swift current bore his body away. 

About this time a hunter named McConnell was captured 
near Lexington by five Indians. At night he wriggled out 
of his bonds and slew four of his sleeping captors, while the 
fifth, who escaped, was so bewildered that, on reaching the 
Indian town, he reported that his party had been attacked at 
night by a number of whites, who had not only killed his 
companions but the prisoner likewise. 

A still more remarkable event had occurred a couple of 
summers previously. Some keel-boats, manned by a hundred 
men under Lieutenant Rogers, and carrying arms and pro- 
visions procured from the Spaniards at New Orleans, were 
set upon by an Indian war-party under Girty and Elliott,^ 
*Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, November i, 1779. 



38o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

while drawn up on a sand beach of the Ohio. The boats 
were captured and plundered, and most of the men were killed; 
several escaped, two under very extraordinary circumstances. 
One had both his arms, the other both his legs, broken. They 
lay hid till the Indians disappeared, and then accidentally dis- 
covered each other. For weeks the two crippled beings lived 
in the lonely spot where the battle had been fought, unable to 
leave it, each supplementing what the other could do. The 
man who could walk kicked wood to him who could not, that 
he might make a fire, and, making long circuits, chased the 
game toward him for him to shoot it. At last they were taken 
ofif by a passing flatboat. 

The backwoodsmen, wonted to vigorous athletic pastimes, 
and to fierce brawls among themselves, were generally over- 
matches for the Indians in hand-to-hand struggles. One such 
fight, that took place some years before this time, deserves 
mention. A man of herculean strength and of fierce, bold 
nature, named Bingaman, lived on the frontier in a lonely 
log house. The cabin had but a single room below, in which 
Bingaman slept, as well as his mother, wife, and child; a 
hired man slept in the loft. One night eight Indians assailed 
the house. As they burst in the door Bingaman thrust the 
women and the child under the bed, his wife being wounded 
by a shot in the breast. Then, having discharged his piece, he 
began to beat about at random with the long heavy rifle. The 
door swung partially to, and in the darkness nothing could be 
seen. The numbers of the Indians helped them but little, for 
Bingaman's tremendous strength enabled him to shake him- 
self free whenever grappled. One after another his foes sank 
under his crushing blows, killed or crippled ; it is said that at 
last but one was left, to flee from the house in terror. The 
hired man had not dared to come down from the loft, and 
when Bingaman found his wife wounded he became so enraged 
that it was with difficulty he could be kept from killing him.^ 

^ It is curious how faithfully, as well as vividly, Cooper has reproduced 
these incidents. His pictures of the white frontiersmen are generally true 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 381 

Incidents such as these followed one another in quick suc- 
cession. They deserve notice less for their own sakes than 
as examples of the way the West was won; for the land was 
really conquered not so much by the actual shock of battle 
between bodies of soldiers, as by the continuous westward 
movement of the armed settlers and the unceasing individual 
warfare waged between them and their red foes. 

For the same reason one or two of the more noted hunters 
and Indian scouts deserve mention, as types of hundreds of 
their fellows who spent their lives and met their deaths in 
the forest. It was their warfare that really did most to dimin- 
ish the fighting force of the tribes. They battled exactly as 
their foes did, making forays, alone or in small parties, for 
scalps and horses, and in their skirmishes inflicted as much 
loss as they received ; in striking contrast to what occurred in 
conflicts between the savages and regular troops. 

One of the most formidable of these hunters was Lewis 
Wetzel.^ Boone, Kenton, and Harrod illustrate by their lives 
the nobler, kindlier traits of the dauntless border-folk ; Wetzel, 
like McGarry, shows the dark side of the picture. He was a 
good friend to his white neighbors, or at least to such of them 
as he liked, and as a hunter and fighter there was not in all 
the land his superior. But he was of brutal and violent tem- 
per, and for the Indians he knew no pity and felt no gener- 
osity. They had killed many of his friends and relations, 
among others his father ; and he hunted them in peace or war 
like wolves. His admirers denied that he ever showed "un- 
wonted cruelty" ^ to Indian women and children ; that he 
sometimes killed them cannot be gainsaid. Some of his feats 
were cold-blooded murders, as when he killed an Indian who 
came in to treat with General Harmar, under pledge of safe- 
conduct; one of his brothers slew in like fashion a chief who 

to life ; in his most noted Indian characters he is much less fortunate. 
But his "Indian John" in the "Pioneers" is one of his best portraits; 
almost equal praise can be given to "Susquesus" in the "Chainbearers." 

* The name is variously spelt ; in the original German records of the 
family it appears as Wiitzel, or Watzel. 'De Haas, 345. 



382 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

came to see Colonel Brodhead. But the frontiersmen loved 
him, for his mere presence was a protection, so great was the 
terror he inspired among the red men. His hardihood and 
address were only equalled by his daring and courage. He 
was literally a man without fear; in his few days of peace 
his chief amusements were wrestling, foot-racing, and shoot- 
ing at a mark. He was a dandy, too, after the fashion of the 
backwoods, especially proud of his mane of long hair, which, 
when he let it down, hung to his knees. He often hunted 
alone in the Indian country, a hundred miles beyond the Ohio. 
As he dared not light a bright fire on these trips, he would, 
on cold nights, make a small coal-pit, and cower over it, draw- 
ing his blanket over his head, when, to use his own words, 
he soon became as hot as in a "stove room." Once he sur- 
prised four Indians sleeping in their camp; falling on them 
he killed three. Another time, when pursued by the same 
number of foes, he loaded his rifle as he ran, and killed in 
succession the three foremost, whereat the other fled. In all, 
he took over thirty scalps of warriors, thus killing more In- 
dians than were slain by either one of the two large armies 
of Braddock and St. Clair during their disastrous campaigns. 
Wetzel's frame, like his heart, was of steel. But his temper 
was too sullen and unruly for him ever to submit to command 
or to bear rule over others. His feats were performed when 
he was either alone or with two or three associates. An army 
of such men would have been wholly valueless. 

Another man, of a far higher type, was Captain Samuel 
Brady, already a noted Indian fighter on the Alleghany. For 
many years after the close of the Revolutionary War he was 
the chief reliance of the frontiersmen of his own neighbor- 
hood. He had lost a father and a brother by the Indians; 
and in return he followed the red men with relentless hatred. 
But he never killed peaceful Indians nor those who came in 
under flags of truce. The tale of his wanderings, his captivi- 
ties, his hairbreadth escapes, and deeds of individual prowess 
would fill a book. He frequently went on scouts alone, either 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 383 

to procure information or to get scalps. On these trips he 
was not only often reduced to the last extremity by hunger, 
fatigue, and exposure, but was in hourly peril of his life from 
the Indians he was hunting. Once he was captured ; but when 
about to be bound to the stake for burning he suddenly flung 
an Indian boy into the fire, and in the confusion burst through 
the warriors, and actually made his escape, though the whole 
pack of yelling savages followed at his heels with rifle and 
tomahawk. He raised a small company of scouts or rangers, 
and was one of the very few captains able to reduce the un- 
ruly frontiersmen to order. In consequence, his company on 
several occasions fairly whipped superior numbers of Indians 
in the woods ; a feat that no regulars could perform, and to 
which the backwoodsmen themselves were generally unequal 
(even though an overmatch for their foes singly), because of 
their disregard of discipline. -"^ 

So, with foray and reprisal, and fierce private war, with 
all the border in a flame, the year 1781 came to an end. At 
its close there were in Kentucky seven hundred and sixty able- 
bodied militia, fit for an offensive campaign.- As this did 
not include the troops at the Falls, nor the large shifting popu- 
lation, nor the "fort soldiers," the weaker men, graybeards, 
and boys, who could handle a rifle behind a stockade, it is 
probable that there were then somewhere between four and 
five thousand souls in Kentucky. 

^ In the open plain the comparative prowess of these forest Indians, of 
the backwoodsmen, and of trained regulars was exactly the reverse of 
what it was in the woods. 

=" Letter of John Todd, October 21, 1781. "Virginia State Papers," II, 
562. The troops at the Falls were in a very destitute condition, with neither 
supplies nor money, and their credit worn threadbare, able to get nothing 
from the surrounding country (ibid., p. 313). In Clark's absence the 
colonel let his garrison be insulted by the townspeople, and so brought the 
soldiers into contempt, while some of the demoralized officers tampered 
with the public stores. It was said that much dissipation prevailed in the 
garrison, to which accusation Clark answered sarcastically: "However 
agreeable such conduct might have been to their sentiments, I believe they 
seldom had the means in their power, for they were generally in a starving 
condition" (ibid., vol. Ill, pp. 347 and 359). 



384 



THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



NOTE A 

(From Canadian Archives.) 

(Haldimand MSS., Series V, Vol. CXXII, p. 351.) 

(Copy.) 

Upper St. Duski, June 9, 1779. 
Dear Sir, 

After much running about, some presents to Chiefs, we had collected 
at the Mingo Town near 200 Savages chiefly Shawanese — When lo ! 
a runner arrived with accounts of the Shawanese towns being attacked 
by a body from Kentuck, they burnt five houses, killed one Indian & 
wounded the Chief badly — lost their own Commander Heron or Hcr- 
ington — they carried off 30 Horses, were pursued by fifty Shawanese, 
the Shawanese were beat back with loss of five & six wounded — News 
flew that all the Towns were to be attack'd & our little body seperated 
in an instant past reassembling — confusion still prevails — much coun- 
selling — no resolves — many are removing — more for peace. 

The Delawares make it dangerous travelling. By this opportunity 
Davison & Cook return sick — Girty is flying about — McCarty stays 
with me with some Ottawas — these unsteady Rogues put me out of all 
patience. — I will go with him in a few days if nothing material occurs 
— See the Enemy that I may not be laugh'd at then return. — The Rebels 
mean I believe to destroy the Villages & corn now up — the method they 
bring their little armies into the field as follows : Every Family on the 
Borders receive orders to send according to their strength (one or two 
men) to the place of Rendezvous at a time appointed (on pain of fine 
or imprisonment) with fifteen or twenty days Provisions, they imme- 
diately receive their ammunition & proceed quickly to action — I am 
credibly inform'd by various means, that they can raise in that manner 
three or four thousand in a few days for such excursions — I was obliged 
to Kill four more Cattle for the Indians at the Mingo Town — they are 
always Cooking or Counselling. 

I have nothing more to inform you ofif if anything material occurs, 
which I really expect in a day or two, I will inform you by Express. 

I am &c 

Henry Bird. 
To Capt. Lernoult. 

{Copy.) 

June I2th, Upper St. Duski. 
Sir, 

Couriers after Couriers arrive with accounts of the Rebels advanc- 
ing to destroy the Savage Villages now all their corn is planted — 



CONTINUANCE OF THE STRUGGLE 385 



NOTE B 

(State Department MSS., No. 48, vol. "Memorials &c Inhabitants of 
Illinois, Kaskaskias and Kentucky.") 

The Petition and Prayr. of the people of that Part of Contry [sic] 
now Claim'd. by the State of Virginia in the Countys of Kaintuckey 
and Ilinois Humbly Sheweth — That we the leige Subjects of the United 
States Labour under many Greivences on acount of not being formd. 
into a Seperate State or tlie Mind and Will of Congress more fully 
known respecting us — And we Humbly beg leave to Present to the 
Honorable Continental Congress our Humble Petition seting forth the 
Grievences and oppressions we labour under and Pray Congress may 
Consider Such our greivences and grant us redress. 

We your Petitioners being situate in a wide Extencive Uncultivated 
Contry and Exposd. on every side to incursions of the Savage Indians 
humbly Conceive Ourselves approssed by several acts of the general 
assembly of Virginia for granting large Grants for waist and un- 
apropriated lands on the Western Waters without Reservation for 
Cultivating and Settling the same whereby Setling the Contry is Dis- 
couraged and the inhabitants are greatly Exposd. to the Saviges by 
whome our wives and Childring are daly Cruily murdered Notwith- 
standing our most Humble Petitions Canot Obtain Redress — By an 
other act we are Taxd. which in our Present Situation we Conceive to 
be oppresive and unjust being Taxd. with money and grain whilst 
Enrold and in actual Pay residing in Garrisons. We are Situate from 
Six Hundred to one Thousand Miles from our Present Seite of Gov- 
ernment, Whereby Criminals are Suffered to Escape with impunity, 
Great numbers who ware Ocationaly absent are Deprived of an Oper- 
tunity of their Just Rights and Emprovements and here we are Obliged 
to Prosecute all Apeals, and whillst we remain uncertain whether the 
unbounded Claim of This Extencive Contry Ought of right to belong 
to the United States or the State of Virginia. They have by another 
late act required of us to Sware alegince to the State of Virginia in 
Particular Notwithstanding we have aredy taken the Oath of alegance 
to the united States. These are Greivences too Heavy to be born, and 
we do Humbly Pray that the Continental Congress will Take Proper 
Methods to form us into a Seperate State or grant us Such Rules and 
regulations as they in their Wisdoms shall think most Proper, During 
the Continuance of the Present War and your Petitioners shall ever 
Pray 

May 15th, 1780. 

[Signed] 

Robert Tyler Richard Connor 

Thomas Hughes Archibald McDonald 

Abraham Van Meter 

(and others to the number of 640). 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 
1 779- 1 782 

AFTER the Moravian Indians were led by their mis- 
sionary pastors to the banks of the Muskingum they 
dwelt peacefully and unharmed for several years. In 
Lord Dunmore's war special care was taken by the white 
leaders that these Quaker Indians should not be harmed; and 
their villages of Salem, Gnadenhutten, and Schonbrunn re- 
ceived no damage whatever. During the early years of the 
Revolutionary struggle they were not molested, but dwelt in 
peace and comfort in their roomy cabins of squared timbers, 
cleanly and quiet, industriously tilling the soil, abstaining from 
all strong drink, schooling their children, and keeping the Sev- 
enth Day as a day of rest. They sought to observe strict neu- 
trality, harming neither the Americans nor the Indians, nor 
yet the allies of the latter, the British and French at Detroit. 
They hoped thereby to ofifend neither side, and to escape un- 
hurt themselves. 

But this was wholly impossible. They occupied an utterly 
untenable position. Their villages lay midway between the 
white settlements southeast of the Ohio and the towns of the 
Indians round Sandusky, the bitterest foes of the Americans 
and those most completely under British influence. They were 
on the trail that the war-parties followed, whether they struck 
at Kentucky or at the valleys of the Alleghany and Mononga- 
hela. Consequently, the Sandusky Indians used the Moravian 
villages as half-way houses at which to halt and refresh them- 

386 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 387 

selves whether starting on a foray or returning with scalps 
and plunder. 

By the time the war had lasted four or five years both the 
wild or heathen Indians and the backwoodsmen had become 
fearfully exasperated with the unlucky Moravians. The 
Sandusky Indians were largely Wyandots, Shawnees, and Del- 
awares, the latter being fellow tribesmen of the Christian In- 
dians; and so they regarded the Moravians as traitors to the 
cause of their kinsfolk, because they would not take up the 
hatchet against the whites. As they could not goad them into 
declaring war, they took malicious pleasure in trying to em- 
broil them against their will, and on returning from raids 
against the settlements often passed through their towns solely 
to cast suspicion on them and to draw down the wrath of the 
backwoodsmen on their heads. The British at Detroit feared 
lest the Americans might use the Moravian villages as a basis 
from which to attack the lake posts ; they also coveted their 
men as allies ; and so the baser among their officers urged the 
Sandusky tribes to break up the villages and drive off the 
missionaries. The other Indian tribes likewise regarded them 
with angry contempt and hostility ; the Iroquois once sent word 
to the Chippewas and Ottawas that they gave them the Chris- 
tian Indians "to make broth of." 

The Americans became even more exasperated. The war- 
parties that plundered and destroyed their homes, killing their 
wives, children, and friends with torments too appalling to 
mention, got shelter and refreshment from the Moravians ^ — 
who, indeed, dared not refuse it. The backwoodsmen, roused 
to a mad frenzy of rage by the awful nature of their wrongs, 
saw that the Moravians rendered valuable help to their cruel 
and inveterate foes, and refused to see that the help was given 
with the utmost reluctance. Moreover, some of the young 
Christian Indians backslid and joined their savage brethren, 
accompanying them on their war-parties and ravaging with as 

^ Heckewelder's "Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren," 
Philadelphia, 1820, p. 166. 



388 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

much cruelty as any of their number.^ Soon the frontiersmen 
began to clamor for the destruction of the Moravian towns; 
yet for a Httle while they were restrained by the Continental 
officers of the few border forts, who always treated these harm- 
less Indians with the utmost kindness. 

On either side were foes, who grew less governable day by 
day, and the fate of the hapless and peaceful Moravians, if 
they continued to dwell on the Muskingum, was absolutely in- 
evitable. With blind fatuity their leaders, the missionaries, 
refused to see the impending doom; and the poor, simple In- 
dians clung to their homes till destroyed. The American com- 
mander at Pittsburg, Colonel Gibson, endeavored to get them 
to come into the American lines, where he would have the 
power, as he already had the wish, to protect them ; he pointed 
out that where they were they served in some sort as a shield to 
the wild Indians, whom he had to spare so as not to harm the 
Moravians.^ The Half King of the Wyandots, from the other 
side, likewise tried to persuade them to abandon their danger- 
ous position, and to come well within the Indian and British 
lines, saying : "Two mighty and angry gods stand opposite to 
each other with their mouths wide open, and you are between 
them, and are in danger of being crushed by one or the other, 
or by both." ^ But in spite of these warnings, and heedless of 
the safety that would have followed the adoption of either 
course, the Moravians followed the advice of their mission- 
aries and continued where they were. They suffered greatly 
from the wanton cruelty of their red brethren ; and their fate 
remains a monument to the cold-blooded and cowardly brutal- 
ity of the borderers, a stain on frontier character that the lapse 
of time cannot wash away; but it is singular that historians 
have not yet pointed out the obvious truth, that no small share 
of the blame for their sad end should be put to the credit of 

* "Pennsylvania Packet" (Philadelphia, April i6, 1782); Heckewelder, 
180; Loskiel's "History of the Mission of the United Brethren" (London, 
1794), P- 'i7'2- ^Loskiel, p. 137. 

'State Department MSS., No. 41, vol. Ill, pp. 78, 79; extract from diary 
of Rev. David Zeisburgcr. 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 389 

the blind folly of their missionary leaders. Their only hope in 
such a conflict as was then raging was to be removed from their 
fatally dangerous position ; and this the missionaries would not 
see. As long as they stayed where they were, it was a mere 
question of chance and time whether they would be destroyed 
by the Indians or the whites ; for their destruction at the hands 
of either one party or the other was inevitable. 

Their fate was not due to the fact that they were Indians ; 
it resulted from their occupying an absolutely false position. 
This is clearly shown by what happened twenty years previously 
to a small community of non-resistant Christian whites. They 
were Dunkards — Quaker-like Germans — who had built a set- 
tlement on the Monongahela. As they helped neither side, 
both distrusted and hated them. The whites harassed them 
in every way, and the Indians finally fell upon and massacred 
them.-'^ The fates of these two communities, of white Dunkards 
and red Moravians, were exactly parallel. Each became hate- 
ful to both sets of combatants, was persecuted by both, and 
finally fell a victim to the ferocity of the race to which it did 
not belong. 

The conduct of the backwoodsmen toward these peaceful 
and harmless Christian Indians was utterly abhorrent, and 
will ever be a subject of just reproach and condemnation; and 
at first sight it seems incredible that the perpetrators of so 
vile a deed should have gone unpunished and almost unblamed. 
It is a dark blot on the character of a people that otherwise 
had many fine and manly qualities to its credit. But the ex- 
traordinary conditions of life on the frontier must be kept 
in mind before passing too severe a judgment. In the turmoil 
of the harassing and long-continued Indian war, and the con- 
sequent loosening of social bonds, it was inevitable that, as 
regards outside matters, each man should do what seemed 
right in his own eyes. The bad and the good alike were left 
free and untrammelled to follow the bent of their desires. The 
people had all they could do to beat off their savage enemies, 

^Withers, 59. 



390 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and to keep order among themselves. They were able to im- 
pose but slight checks on ruffianism that was aimed at out- 
siders. There were plenty of good and upright men who would 
not harm any Indians wrongfully, and who treated kindly those 
who were peaceable. On the other hand, there were many of 
violent and murderous temper. These knew that their neigh- 
bors would actively resent any wrong done to themselves, but 
knew, also, that, under the existing conditions, they would at 
the worst do nothing more than openly disapprove of an out- 
rage perpetrated on Indians. 

The violence of the bad is easily understood. The indiffer- 
ence displayed toward their actions by the better men of the 
community, who were certainly greatly in the majority, is 
harder to explain. It rose from varying causes. In the first 
place, the long continuance of Indian warfare, and the un- 
speakable horrors that were its invariable accompaniments, had 
gradually wrought up many even of the best of the backwoods- 
men to the point where they barely considered an Indian as a 
human being. The warrior was not to them a creature of ro- 
mance. They knew him for what he was — filthy, cruel, lecher- 
ous, and faithless. He sometimes had excellent qualities, but 
these they seldom had a chance to see. They always met him 
at his worst. To them he was in peace a lazy, dirty, drunken 
beggar, whom they despised, and yet whom they feared; for 
the squalid, contemptible creature might at any moment be 
transformed into a foe whose like there was not to be found 
in all the wide world for ferocity, cunning, and bloodthirsty 
cruelty. The greatest Indians, chiefs like Logan and Cornstalk, 
who were capable of deeds of the loftiest and most sublime 
heroism, were also at times cruel monsters or drunken good- 
for-nothings. Their meaner followers had only such virtues 
as belong to the human wolf — stealth, craft, tireless endurance, 
and the courage that prefers to prey on the helpless, but will 
fight to the death without flinching if cornered. 

Moreover, the backwoodsmen were a hard people — a peo- 
ple who still lived in an iron age. They did not spare them- 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 391 

selves, nor those who were dear to them; far less would they 
spare their real or possible foes. Their lives were often stern 
and grim; they were wonted to hardship and suffering. In 
the histories or traditions of the different families there are 
recorded many tales of how they sacrificed themselves, and, in 
time of need, sacrificed others. The mother who was a cap- 
tive among the Indians might lay down her life for her child; 
but if she could not save it, and to stay with it forbade her 
own escape, it was possible that she would kiss it good-by and 
leave it to its certain fate, while she herself, facing death at 
every step, fled homeward through hundreds of miles of wil- 
derness.^ The man who daily imperilled his own life, would, 
if water was needed in the fort, send his wife and daughter 
to draw it from the spring round which he knew Indians 
lurked, trusting that the appearance of the women would make 
the savages think themselves undiscovered, and that they would 
therefore defer their attack.- Such people were not likely to 
spare their red-skinned foes. Many of their friends, who 
had never hurt the savages in any way, had perished, the vic- 
tims of wanton aggression. They themselves had seen in- 
numerable instances of Indian treachery. They had often 
known the chiefs of a tribe to profess warm friendship at the 
very moment that their young men were stealing and mur- 
dering. They grew to think of even the most peaceful Indians 
as merely sleeping wild beasts, and while their own wrongs 

^ See Hale's "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," the adventures of Mrs. Inglis. 
She was captured on the headwaters of the Kanawha, at the time of 
Braddock's defeat. The other inhabitants of the settlement were also taken 
prisoners or massacred by the savages, whom they had never wronged in 
any way. She was taken to the Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. On the way 
her baby was born, but she was not allowed to halt a day on account of 
this incident. She left it in the Indian camp, and made her escape in com- 
pany with "an old Dutch woman." They lived on berries and nuts for 
forty days, while they made their way homeward. Both got in safely, 
though they separated after the old Dutch woman, in the extremity of 
hunger, had tried to kill her companion that she might eat her. When 
Cornstalk's party perpetrated the massacre of the Clendennins during 
Pontiac's war (see Stewart's "Narrative"), Mrs. Clendennin likewise left 
her baby to its death, and made her escape ; her husband had previously 
been killed and his bloody scalp tied across her jaws as a gag. 

'As at the siege of Bryan's Station. 



392 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

were ever vividly before them, they rarely heard of or heeded 
those done to their foes. In a community where every strong, 
courageous man was a bulwark to the rest, he was sure to be 
censured lightly for merely killing a member of a loathed and 
hated race. 

Many of the best of the backwoodsmen were Bible-readers, 
but they were brought up in a creed that made much of the 
Old Testament, and laid slight stress on pity, truth, or mercy. 
They looked at their foes as the Hebrew prophets looked at 
the enemies of Israel. What were the abominations because 
of which the Canaanites were destroyed before Joshua, when 
compared with the abominations of the red savages whose 
lands they, another chosen people, should in their turn inherit ? 
They believed that the Lord was king for ever and ever, and 
they believed no less that they were but obeying His com- 
mandment as they strove mightily to bring about the day 
when the heathen should have perished out of the land ; for they 
had read in The Book that he was accursed who did the work 
of the Lord deceitfully, or kept his sword back from blood. 
There was many a stern frontier zealot who deemed all the 
red men, good and bad, corn ripe for the reaping. Such a 
one rejoiced to see his followers do to the harmless Moravians 
as the Danites once did to the people of Laish, who lived quiet 
and secure, after the manner of the Sidonians, and had no 
business with any man, and who yet were smitten with the 
edge of the sword, and their city burnt with fire. 

Finally, it must not be forgotten that there were men on 
the frontier who did do their best to save the peaceful Indians, 
and that there were also many circumstances connected with 
the latter that justly laid them open to suspicion. When young 
backsliding Moravians appeared in the war-parties, as cruel 
and murderous as their associates, the whites were warranted 
in feeling doubtful as to whether their example might not in- 
fect the remainder of their people. War-parties, whose mem- 
bers in dreadful derision left women and children impaled 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 393 

by their trail to greet the sight of the pursuing husbands and 
fathers, found food and lodging at the Moravian towns. No 
matter how reluctant the aid thus given, the pursuers were 
right in feeling enraged, and in demanding that the towns 
should be removed to where they could no longer give comfort 
to the enemy. When the missionaries refused to consent to 
this removal,, they thereby became helpers of the hostile In- 
dians; they wronged the frontiersmen, and they still more 
grievously wronged their own flocks. 

They certainly had ample warning of the temper of the 
whites. Colonel Brodhead was in command at Fort Pitt until 
the end of 178 1. At the time that General Sullivan ravaged the 
country of the Six Nations, he had led a force up the Alle- 
ghany and created a diversion by burning one or two Iroquois 
towns. In 1 78 1, he led a successful expedition against a town 
of hostile Delawares on the Muskingum, taking it by surprise 
and surrounding it so completely that all within were cap- 
tured. Sixteen noted warriors and marauders were singled 
out and put to death. The remainder fared but little better, 
for, while marching back to Fort Pitt, the militia fell on them 
and murdered all the men, leaving only the women and chil- 
dren. The militia also started to attack the Moravians, and 
were only prevented by the strenuous exertions of Brodhead. 
Even this proof of the brutality of their neighbors was wasted 
on the missionaries. 

The first blow the Moravians received was from the wild 
Indians. In the fall of this same year (1781) their towns 
were suddenly visited by a horde of armed warriors, horse- 
men and footmen, from Sandusky and Detroit. Conspicuous 
among them were the Wyandots under the Half King; the 
Delawares, also led by a famous chief. Captain Pipe; and a 
body of white rangers from Detoit, including British, French, 
and Tories, commanded by the British Captain Elliott, and 
flying the British flag.^ With them came also Shawnees, Chip- 
pewas, and Ottawas. All were acting in pursuance of the 
* State Department MSS., No. 41, vol. Ill, p. ^T. 



394 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

express orders of the commandant at Detroit.^ These war- 
riors insisted on the Christian Indians abandoning their vil- 
lages and accompanying them back to Sandusky and Detroit; 
and they destroyed many of the houses, and much of the food 
for the men and the fodder for the horses and cattle. The 
Moravians begged humbly to be left where they were, but 
without avail. They were forced away to Lake Erie, the 
missionaries being taken to Detroit, while the Indians were 
left on the plains of Sandusky. The wild Indians were very 
savage against them, but the British commandant would not 
let them be seriously maltreated,^ though they were kept in 
great want and almost starved. 

A few Moravians escaped, and remained in their villages; 
but these, three or four weeks later, were captured by a small 
detachment of American militia, under Colonel David William- 
son, who had gone out to make the Moravians either move 
farther off or else come in under the protection of Fort Pitt. 
Williamson accordingly took the Indians to the fort, where 
the Continental commander, Colonel John Gibson, at once 
released them, and sent them back to the villages unharmed. ""^ 
Gibson had all along been a firm friend of the Moravians. He 
had protected them against the violence of the borderers, and 
had written repeated and urgent letters to Congress and to 
his superior officers, asking that some steps might be taken 
to protect the friendly Christian Indians."* In the general 
weakness and exhaustion, however, nothing was done ; and, as 
neither the State nor Federal government took any steps to 
protect them, and as their missionaries refused to learn wis- 
dom, it was evident that the days of the Moravians were 
numbered. The failure of the government to protect them 
was perhaps inevitable, but was certainly discreditable. 

^ Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, October 5th and 21st, 
1781 ; McKee to De Peyster, October i8th. 

^ Ibid. December 11, 1781. 

'Gibson was the old friend of the chief Logan. It is only just to re- 
member that the Continental officers at Fort Pitt treated the Moravians 
even better than did the British officers at Detroit. 

* Haldimand MSS. Jan. 22, 1780 ("Intercepted Letters"). 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 395 

The very day after Gibson sent the Christian Indians back 
to their homes, several murders were committed near Pitts- 
burg, and many of the frontiersmen insisted that they were 
done with the good-will or connivance of the Moravians. The 
settlements had suffered greatly all summer long, and the peo- 
ple clamored savagely against all the Indians, blaming both 
Gibson and Williamson for not having killed or kept captive 
their prisoners. The ruffianly and vicious, of course, clam- 
ored louder than any; the mass of people who are always led 
by others chimed in, in a somewhat lower key; and many 
good men were silent for the reasons given already. In a 
frontier democracy, military and civil officers are directly de- 
pendent upon popular approval, not only for their offices, but 
for what they are able to accomplish while filling them. They 
are therefore generally extremely sensitive to either praise or 
blame. Ambitious men flatter and bow to popular prejudice 
or opinion, and only those of genuine power and self-reliance 
dare to withstand it. Williamson was physically a fairly brave 
officer and not naturally cruel ; but he was weak and ambitious, 
ready to yield to any popular demand, and, if it would advance 
his own interests, to connive at any act of barbarity.^ Gibson, 
however, who was a very different man, paid no heed to the cry 
raised against him. 

With incredible folly, the Moravians refused to heed even 
such rough warnings as they had received. During the long 
winter they suffered greatly from cold and hunger; at San- 
dusky, and before the spring of 1782 opened, a hundred and 
fifty of them returned to their deserted villages. 

That year the Indian outrages on the frontiers began very 
early. In February, there was some fine weather; and while 
it lasted, several families of settlers were butchered, some un- 
der circumstances of peculiar atrocity. In particular, four 
Sandusky Indians having taken some prisoners, impaled two 

*This is the most favorable estimate of his character, based on what 
Doddridge says (p. 260). He was a very despicable person, but not the 
natural brute the missionaries painted him. 



396 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of them, a woman and a child, while on their way to the 
Moravian towns, where they rested and ate, prior to continuing 
their journey with their remaining captives. When they left 
they warned the Moravians that white men were on their 
trail. ^ A white man who had just escaped this same impaling- 
party also warned the Moravians that the exasperated bor- 
derers were preparing a party to kill them ; and Gibson, from 
Fort Pitt, sent a messenger to them, who, however, arrived 
too late. But the poor Christian Indians, usually very timid, 
now, in the presence of a real danger, showed a curious apathy; 
their senses were numbed and dulled by their misfortunes, 
and they quietly awaited their doom.~ 

It was not long deferred. Eighty or ninety frontiersmen, 
under Williamson, hastily gathered together to destroy the 
Moravian towns. It was, of course, just such an expedition 
as most attracted the brutal, the vicious, and the ruffianly; 
but a few decent men, to their shame, went along. They 
started in March, and on the third day reached the fated 
villages. That no circumstance might be wanting to fill the 
measure of their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assuring 
them that they meant well, and spent an hour or two in gather- 
ing together those who were in Salem and Gnadenhutten, put- 
ting them all in two houses at the latter place. Those at the 
third town of Schonbrunn got warning and made their escape. 

As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered in the 
two houses, the men in one, the women and children in the 
other, the whites held a council as to what should be done with 
them. The great majority were for putting them instantly to 
death. Eighteen men protested, and asked that the lives of 
the poor creatures should be spared ; and then withdrew, calling 
God to witness that they were innocent of the crime about 
to be committed. By rights they should have protected the 
victims at any hazard. One of them took off with him a small 
Indian boy, whose life was thus spared. With this exception, 
only two lads escaped. 

'Heckeweldcr, 311. 'Loskiel, 176. 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 397 

When the murderers told the doomed Moravians their fate, 
they merely requested a short delay in which to prepare them- 
selves for death. They asked one another's pardon for what- 
ever wrongs they might have done, knelt down and prayed, 
kissed one another farewell, "and began to sing hymns of hope 
and of praise to the Most High." Then the white butchers 
entered the houses and put to death the ninety-six men, women, 
and children that were within their walls. More than a hun- 
dred years have passed since this deed of revolting brutality; 
but even now a just man's blood boils in his veins at the re- 
membrance. It is impossible not to regret that fate failed 
to send some strong war-party of savages across the path 
of these inhuman cowards, to inflict on them the punishment 
they so richly deserved. We know that a few of them were 
afterward killed by the Indians; it is a matter of keen regret 
that any escaped. 

When the full particulars of the affair were known all the 
best leaders of the border, almost all the most famous Indian 
fighters, joined in denouncing it.^ Nor is it right that the 
whole of the frontier folk should bear the blame for the deed. 
It is a fact, honorable and worthy of mention, that the Ken- 
tuckians were never implicated in this or any similar mas- 
sacre. - 

But at the time, and in their own neighborhood — the corner 
of the upper Ohio valley where Pennsylvania and Virginia 

' Colonel James Smith, then of Kentucky, in 1799 calls it "an act of bar- 
barity equal to any thing I ever knew to be committed by the savages 
themselves, except the burning of prisoners." 

" The Germans of upcountry North Carolina were guilty of as brutal 
massacres as the Scotch-Irish backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania. See Adair, 
245. There are two or three individual instances of the barbarity of 
Kentuckians — one being to the credit of McGarry — but they are singularly 
few when the length and the dreadful nature of their Indian wars are 
taken into account. Throughout their history the Kentucky pioneers had 
the right on their side in their dealings with the Indians. They were not 
wanton aggressors ; they entered upon vacant hunting-grounds, to which 
no tribe had a clear title, and to which most even of the doubtful titles 
had been fairly extinguished. They fought their foes fiercely, with vary- 
ing fortune, and eventtially wrested the land from them ; but they very 
rarely wronged them ; and for the numerous deeds of fearful cruelty that 
were done on Kentucky soil, the Indians were in almost every case to blame. 



398 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

touch — the conduct of the murderers of the Moravians roused 
no condemnation. The borderers at first felt about it as the 
EngHsh Whigs originally felt about the massacre of Glencoe. 
For some time the true circumstances of the affair were not 
widely known among them. They were hot with wrath against 
all the red-skinned race; and they rejoiced to hear of the 
death of a number of treacherous Indians who pretended to be 
peaceful, while harboring and giving aid and comfort to, and 
occasionally letting their own young men join, bands of avowed 
murderers. Of course, the large, wicked and disorderly ele- 
ment was loud in praise of the deed. The decent people, by 
their silence, acquiesced. 

A terrible day of reckoning was at hand; the retribution 
fell on but part of the real criminals, and bore most heavily 
on those who were innocent of any actual complicity in the 
deed of evil. Nevertheless, it is impossible to grieve overmuch 
for the misfortune that befell men who freely forgave and 
condoned such treacherous barbarity. 

In May, a body of four hundred and eighty Pennsylvania 
and Virginia militia gathered at Mingo Bottom, on the Ohio, 
with the purpose of marching against and destroying the towns 
of the hostile Wyandots and Delawares in the neighborhood 
of the Sandusky River. The Sandusky Indians were those 
whose attacks were most severely felt by that portion of the 
frontier; and for their repeated and merciless ravages they 
deserved the severest chastisement. The expedition against 
them was from every point of view just ; and it was undertaken 
to punish them, and without any definite idea of attacking 
the remnant of the Moravians who were settled among them. 
On the other hand, the militia included In their ranks most 
of those who had taken part In the murderous expedition 
of two months before; this fact, and their general character, 
made it certain that the peaceable and Inoffensive Indians 
would, If encountered, be slaughtered as pitilessly as their hos- 
tile brethren. 

How little the militia volunteers disapproved of the Mora- 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 399 

vian massacre was shown when, as was the custom, they met 
to choose a leader. There were two competitors for the place, 
Williamson, who commanded at the massacre, hieing one, and he 
was beaten by only five votes. His successful opponent, Colonel 
William Crawford, was a fairly good officer, a just and up- 
right man, but with no special fitness for such a task as that 
he had undertaken. Nor were the troops he led of very good 
stuff ; ^ though they included a few veteran Indian fighters. 

The party left Mingo Bottom on the 25th of May. After 
nine days' steady marching through the unbroken forests they 
came out on the Sandusky plains ; billowy stretches of prairie, 
covered with high coarse grass and dotted with islands of tim- 
ber. As the men marched across them they roused quantities 
of prairie-fowl, and saw many geese and sand-hill cranes, 
which circled about in the air, making a strange clamor. 

Crawford hoped to surprise the Indian towns ; but his prog- 
ress was slow, and the militia every now and then fired off 
their guns. The spies of the savages dogged his march and 
knew all his movements ; ^ and runners were sent to Detroit 

^ A minute and exhaustive account of Crawford's campaign is given by- 
Mr. C. W. Butterfield in his "Expedition against Sandusky" (Cincinnati: 
Robert Clarke & Co., 1873). Mr. Butterfield shows conclusively that the 
accepted accounts are wholly inaccurate, being derived from the reports of 
the Moravian missionaries, whose untruthfulness (especially Heckcwel- 
der's) is clearly demonstrated. He shows the apocryphal nature of some 
of the pretended narratives of the expedition, such as two in "The Amer- 
ican Pioneer," etc. He also shows how inaccurate McClung's "sketches" 
are — for McClung was like a host of other early Western annalists, pre- 
serving some valuable facts in a good deal of rubbish, and having very 
little appreciation indeed of the necessity of so much as approximate 
accuracy. Only a few of these early Western historians had the least 
conception of the value of evidence or of the necessity of sifting it, or of 
weighing testimony. 

On the other hand, Mr. Butterfield is drawn into grave errors, by his 
excessive partisanship of the borderers. He passes lightly over their 
atrocious outrages, colors favorably many of their acts, and praises the 
generalship of Crawford and the soldiership of his men; when in reality 
the campaign was badly conducted from beginning to end, and reflected 
discredit on most who took part in it ; Crawford did poorly, and the bulk 
of his men acted like unruly cowards. 

" Heckewelder, 336. Butterfield shows conclusively that there is not the 
slightest ground to accept Heckewelder's assertion that Crawford's people 
openly declared that "no Indian was to be spared, friend or foe." 



400 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

asking help. This the British commandant at once granted. 
He sent to the assistance of the threatened tribes a number 
of Lake Indians and a body of rangers and Canadian volun- 
teers, under Captain Caldwell.^ 

On the 4th of June Crawford's troops reached one of the 
Wyandot towns. It was found to be deserted; and the army 
marched on to try and find the others. Late in the afternoon, 
in the midst of the plains, near a cranberry marsh, they en- 
countered Caldwell and his Detroit rangers, together with 
about two hundred Delawares, Wyandots, and Lake Indians.^ 
The British and Indians united certainly did not much exceed 
three hundred men ; but they were hourly expecting reinforce- 
ments, and decided to give battle. They were posted in a 
grove of trees, from which they were driven by the first 
charge of the Americans. A hot skirmish ensued, in which, in 
spite of Crawford's superiority in force, and of the excep- 
tionally favorable nature of the country, he failed to gain any 
marked advantage. His troops, containing so large a leaven 
of the murderers of the Moravians, certainly showed small 
fighting capacity when matched against armed men who could 
defend themselves. After the first few minutes neither side 
gained nor lost ground. 

Of the Americans five were killed and nineteen wounded 
— in all twenty-four. Of their opponents the rangers lost two 
men killed and three wounded, Caldwell being one of the latter ; 
and the Indians four killed and eight wounded — in all seven- 
teen.'"^ 

That night Crawford's men slept by their watch-fires in the 
grove, their foes camping roundabout in the open prairie. 
Next morning the British and Indians were not inclined to 

^Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, May 14, 1782. 

' Ibid. Official report of Lieutenant John Turney, of the rangers, June 
7, 1782. 

' Ibid. Probably some of this loss occurred on the following day. I 
rely on Buttcrficld for the American loss, as he quotes Irvine's official 
report, etc. He of course wrote without knowledge of the British reports; 
and his account of the Indian losses and numbers is all wrong. He fails 
signally in his effort to prove that the Americans behaved bravely. 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 401 

renew the attack; they wished to wait until their numbers 
were increased. The only chance of the American militia was 
to crush their enemies before reinforcements arrived, yet they 
lay supine and idle all day long, save for an occasional harm- 
less skirmish. Crawford's generalship was as poor as the sol- 
diership of his men. 

In the afternoon the Indians were joined by one hundred and 
forty Shawnees. At sight of this accession of strength the 
dispirited militia gave up all thought of anything but flight, 
though they were still equal in numbers to their foes. That 
night they began a hurried and disorderly retreat. The Shaw- 
nees and Delawares attacked them in the darkness, causing 
some loss and great confusion, and a few of the troops got 
into the marsh. Many thus became scattered, and next morn- 
ing there were only about three hundred men left together 
in a body. Crawford himself was among the missing, so 
Williamson took command, and hastily continued the retreat. 
The savages did not make a very hot pursuit; nevertheless, in 
the afternoon of that day a small number of Indians and 
Detroit rangers overtook the Americans. They were all 
mounted. A slight skirmish followed, and the Americans 
lost eleven men, but repulsed their pursuers.^ After this they 
suffered little molestation, and reached Mingo Bottom on the 
13th of the month.- 

Many of the stragglers came in afterward. In all about 
seventy either died of their wounds, were killed outright, or 
were captured. Of the latter, those who were made prisoners 
by the Wyandots were tomahawked and their heads stuck on 
poles ; but if they fell into the hands of the Shawnees or Dela- 
wares they were tortured to death with fiendish cruelty. Among 
them was Crawford himself, who had become separated from 
the main body when it began its disorderly night retreat. 

*Who were probably at this point much fewer in number than the 
Americans; Butterfield says the reverse, but his account is untrustworthy 
on these matters. 

^As Butterfield shows, Heckewelder's account of Crawford's whole ex- 
pedition is a piece of sheer romancing. 



402 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

After abandoning his jaded horse he started homeward on 
foot, but fell into the hands of a small party of Delawares, 
together with a companion named Knight. 

These two prisoners were taken to one of the Delaware 
villages. The Indians were fearfully exasperated by the Mora- 
vian massacre ; ^ and some of the former Moravians, who had 
rejoined their wild tribesmen, told the prisoners that from that 
time on not a single captive should escape torture. Never- 
theless, it is likely that Crawford would have been burned 
in any event, and that most of the prisoners would have been 
tortured to death even had the Moravians never been harmed; 
for such had always been the custom of the Delawares. 

The British, who had cared for the remnants of the Mora- 
vians, now did their best to stop the cruelties of the Indians,^ 
but could accomplish little or nothing. Even the Mingos and 
Hurons told them that though they would not torture any 
Americans, they intended thenceforth to put all their prisoners 
to death.^ 

Crawford was tied to the stake in the presence of a hundred 
Indians. Among them were Simon Girty, the white renegade, 
and a few Wyandots. Knight, Crawford's fellow captive, was 
a horrified spectator of the awful sufferings which he knew 
he was destined by his captors ultimately to share. Crawford, 
stripped naked, and with his hands bound behind him, was 
fastened to a high stake by a strong rope; the rope was long 
enough for him to walk once or twice around the stake. The 
fire, of small hickory poles, was several yards from the post, 
so as only to roast and scorch him. Powder was shot into 
his body, and burning fagots shoved against him, while red 
embers were strewn beneath his feet. For two hours he bore 
his torments with manly fortitude, speaking low, and beseech- 
ing the Almighty to have mercy on his soul. Then he fell 
down, and his torturers scalped him and threw burning coals 
on his bare skull. Rising, he walked about the post once or 

* Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, June 23, 1782. 
'Ibid. August 18, 1782. ^Ibid. December i, 1782. 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 403 

twice again, and then died. Girty and the Wyandots looked 
on, laughing at his agony, but taking no part in the torture. 
When the news of his dreadful fate was brought to the set- 
tlements, it excited the greatest horror, not only along the 
whole frontier, but elsewhere in the country ; for he was widely 
known, was a valued friend of Washington, and was every- 
where beloved and respected. 

Knight, a small and weak-looking man, was sent to be burned 
at the Shawnee towns, under the care of a burly savage. Mak- 
ing friends with the latter, he lulled his suspicions, the more 
easily because the Indian evidently regarded so small a man 
with contempt ; and then, watching his opportunity, he knocked 
his guard down and ran off into the woods, eventually making 
his way to the settlements. 

Another of the captives, Slover by name, made a more re- 
markable escape. Slover's life history had been curious. 
When a boy eight years old, living near the springs of the 
Kanawha, his family was captured by Indians, his brother 
alone escaping. His father was killed, and his two little sisters 
died of fatigue on the road to the Indian villages ; his mother 
was afterward ransomed. He lived twelve years with the sav- 
ages, at first in the Miami towns, and then with the Shawnees. 
When twenty years old he went to Fort Pitt, where, by acci- 
dent, he was made known to some of his relations. They 
pressed him to rejoin his people, but he had become so wedded 
to savage life that he at first refused. At last he yielded, 
however, took up his abode with the men of his own color, and 
became a good citizen and a worthy member of the Presby- 
terian Church. At the outbreak of the Revolution he served 
fifteen months as a Continental soldier, and when Crawford 
started against the Sandusky Indians, he went along as a scout. 

Slover, when captured, was taken round to various Indian 
towns, and saw a number of his companions, as well as other 
white prisoners, tomahawked or tortured to death. He was 
examined publicly about many matters at several Great Coun- 
cils — for he spoke two or three different Indian languages 



404 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

fluently. At one of the councils he heard the Indians sol- 
emnly resolve to take no more prisoners thereafter, but to 
kill all Americans, of whatever sex and age, some of the Brit- 
ish agents from Detroit signifying their approval of the reso- 
lution.^ 

At last he was condemned to be burned, and was actually tied 
to the stake. But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the 
wood that it was determined to reprieve him till the morrow. 
That night he was bound and put in a wigwam under the care 
of three warriors. They laughed and chatted with the pris- 
oner, mocking him, and describing to him with relish all the 
torments that he was to suffer. At last they fell asleep, and, 
just before daybreak, he managed to slip out of his rope and 
escaped, entirely naked. 

Catching a horse he galloped away sitting on a piece of old 
rug, and guiding the animal with the halter. He rode steadily 
and at speed for seventy miles, until his horse dropped dead 
under him late in the afternoon. Springing off, he continued 
the race on foot. At last he halted, sick and weary ; but, when 
he had rested an hour or two, he heard afar off the halloo of 
his pursuers. Struggling to his feet he continued his flight, 
and ran until after dark. He then threw himself down and 
snatched a few hours' restless sleep, but, as soon as the moon 
rose, he renewed his run for life, carefully covering his trail 
whenever possible. At last he distanced his enemies. For five 
days he went straight through the woods, naked, bruised, and 
torn, living on a few berries and a couple of small crawfish 

^ Slover asserts that it was taken in consequence of a message sent 
advising it by the commandant at Detroit. This is doubtless untrue ; the 
commandant at Detroit did what he could to stop such outrages, although 
many of his more reckless and uncontrollable subordinates very probably 
pursued an opposite course. The ignorant and violently prejudiced back- 
woodsmen naturally believed all manner of evil of their British foes; but 
it is singular that writers who ought to be well informed should even now 
continue to accept all their wild assertions as un.iuestioned facts. The 
conduct of the British was very bad ; but it is silly to describe it in the 
terms often used. The year after their escape Slover dictated, and Knight 
wrote, narratives of their adventures, which were together published in 
book form at Philadelphia in 1783. They are very interesting. 



THE MORAVIAN MASSACRE 405 

he caught in a stream. He could not sleep nor sometimes 
even lie down at night because of the mosquitoes. On the 
morning of the sixth day he reached Wheeling, after experi- 
encing such hardship and suffering as none but an iron will 
and frame could have withstood. 

Until near the close of the year 1782 the frontiers suffered 
heavily. A terrible and deserved retribution fell on the bor- 
derers for their crime in failing to punish the dastardly deed 
of Williamson and his associates. The Indians were roused 
to savage anger by the murder of the Moravians, and were 
greatly encouraged by their easy defeat of Crawford's troops. 
They harassed the settlements all along the upper Ohio, the 
Alleghany, and the Monongahela, and far into the interior,^ 
burning, ravaging, and murdering, and bringing dire dismay 
to every lonely clearing and every palisaded hamlet of rough 
log cabins. 

* "Virginia State Papers," III, 235. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CONQUERED FRENCH 
SETTLEMENTS 

I 779-1 783 

THE Virginian government took immediate steps to pro- 
vide for the civil administration of the country Clark 
had conquered. In the fall of 1778 the entire region 
northwest of the Ohio was constituted the county of Illinois, 
with John Todd as county lieutenant or commandant. 

Todd was a firm friend and follower of Clark's and had 
gone with him on his campaign against Vincennes. It there- 
fore happened that he received his commission while at the 
latter town, early in the spring of '79. In May, he went to 
Kaskaskia, to organize the county; and Clark, who remained 
military commandant of the Virginia State troops that were 
quartered in the district, was glad to turn over the civil gov- 
ernment to the charge of his old friend. 

Together with his commission, Todd received a long and 
excellent letter of instructions from Governor Patrick Henry. 
He was empowered to choose a deputy commandant and officers 
for the militia; but the judges and officers of the court were 
to be elected by the people themselves. He was given large 
discretionary power, Henry impressing upon him with especial 
earnestness the necessity to "cultivate and conciliate the French 
and Indians." ^ With this end in view, he was bidden to pay 

^ See Colonel John Todd's "Record Book," while county lieutenant of 
Illinois. There is a MS. copy in Colonel Durrett's library at Louisville. 
It is our best authority for these years in Illinois. The substance of it is 
given on pp. 49-68 of Mr. Edward G. Mason's interesting and valuable 
pamphlet on "Illinois in the i8th Century" (Chicago, Fergus Printing Co., 
1881). 

406 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 407 

special heed to the customs of the Creoles, to avoid shocking 
their prejudices, and to continually consult with their most 
intelligent and upright men. He was to co-operate in every 
way with Clark and his troops, while at the same time the 
militia were to be exclusively under his own control. The 
inhabitants were to have strict justice done them if wronged 
by the troops ; and Clark was to put down rigorously any 
licentiousness on the part of the soldiers. The wife and chil- 
dren of the former British commandant — the Creole Roche- 
blave — were to be treated with particular respect, and not 
suffered to want for anything. He was exhorted to use all his 
diligence and ability to accomplish the difficult task set him. 
Finally, Henry advised him to lose no opportunity of incul- 
cating in the minds of the French the value of the liberty 
the Americans brought them, as contrasted with "the slavery 
to which the Illinois was destined" by the British. 

This last sentence was proved by subsequent events to be 
a touch of wholly unconscious but very grim humor. The 
French were utterly unsuited for liberty, as the Americans 
understood the term, and to most of them the destruction of 
British rule was a misfortune. The bold, self-reliant, and 
energetic spirits among them, who were able to become Ameri- 
canized, and to adapt themselves to the new conditions, un- 
doubtedly profited immensely by the change. As soon as they 
adopted American ways, they were received by Americans on 
terms of perfect and cordial equality, and they enjoyed a far 
higher kind of life than could possibly have been theirs for- 
merly, and achieved a much greater measure of success. But 
most of the Creoles were helplessly unable to grapple with the 
new life. They had been accustomed to the paternal rule of 
priest and military commandant, and they were quite unable to 
govern themselves, or to hold their own with the pushing, 
eager, and often unscrupulous newcomers. So little able were 
they to understand precisely what the new form of govern- 
ment was, that when they went down to receive Todd as com- 



4o8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

mandant, it is said that some of them, joining in the cheering, 
from force of habit cried : "Vive le roi." 

For the first year of Todd's administration, while Clark 
still remained in the county as commandant of the State troops, 
matters went fairly well. Clark kept the Indians completely 
in check, and when some of them finally broke out, and started 
on a marauding expedition against Cahokia, he promptly re- 
pulsed them, and by a quick march burned their towns on Rock 
River, and forced them to sue for peace. -^ 

Todd appointed a Virginian, Richard Winston, as com- 
mandant at Kaskaskia; all his other appointees were French- 
men. An election was forthwith held for justices — to the 
no small astonishment of the Creoles, unaccustomed as they 
were to American methods of self-government. Among those 
whom they elected as judges and court of^cers were some of 
the previously appointed militia captains and lieutenants, who 
thus held two positions. The judges governed their decisions 
solely by the old French laws and customs.^ Todd at once 
made the court proceed to business. On its recommendation, 
he granted licenses to trade to men of assured loyalty. He 
also issued a proclamation in reference to new settlers taking 
up lands. Being a shrewd man, he clearly foresaw the ruin 
that was sure to arise from the new Virginia land-laws as 
applied to Kentucky, and he feared the inrush of a horde 
of speculators, who would buy land with no immediate in- 
tention of settling thereon. Besides, the land was so fertile 
in the river-bottoms that he deemed the amount Virginia al- 
lotted to each person excessive. So he decreed that each settler 
should take up his land in the shape of one of the long narrow 
French farms that stretched back from the water-front, and 
that no claim should contain a greater number of acres than 
did one of these same farms. This proclamation undoubtedly 
had a very good effect. 

He next wrestled steadily, but much less successfully, with 

* In the beginning of 1780. Bradford MS. 
'State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 51. 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 409 

the financial question. He attempted to establish a land bank, 
as it were, setting aside a great tract of land to secure certain 
issues of Continental money. The scheme failed, and in spite 
of his public assurance that the Continental currency would 
shortly be equal in value to gold and silver, it swiftly sank 
until it was not worth two cents on the dollar. 

This wretched and worthless paper money which the Ameri- 
cans brought with them was a perfect curse to the country. 
Its rapid depreciation made it almost impossible to pay the 
troops, or to secure them supplies, and as a consequence they 
became disorderly and mutinous. Two or three prominent 
Creoles, who were devoted adherents to the American cause, 
made loans of silver to the Virginian government, as repre- 
sented by Clark, thereby helping him materially in the prose- 
cution of his campaign. Chief among these public-spirited 
patriots were Francis Vigo and the priest Gibault, both of them 
already honorably mentioned. Vigo advanced nearly nine 
thousand dollars in specie — piastres or Spanish milled dollars 
— receiving in return bills on the "Agent of Virginia," which 
came back protested for want of funds; and neither he nor 
his heirs ever got a dollar of what was due them. He did 
even more. The Creoles at first refused to receive anything 
but peltries or silver for their goods ; they would have nothing 
to do with the paper, and to all explanations as to its uses, 
simply answered "that their commandants never made 
money." ^ Finally, they were persuaded to take it on Vigo's 
personal guaranty, and his receiving it in his store. Even he, 
however, could not buoy it up long. 

Gibault likewise - advanced a large sum of money, parted 
with his titles and beasts, so as to set a good example to his 
parishioners, and, with the same purpose, furnished goods to 
the troops at ordinary prices, taking the paper in exchange 
as if it had been silver. In consequence, he lost over fifteen 

* Law's "Vincennes," p. 49, 126. For some inscrutable reason, by the 
way, the Americans for a long time persisted in speaking of the place as 
St. Vincennes. 

' See his letter to Governor St. Clair, May i, 1790. 



4IO THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

hundred dollars, was forced to sell his only two slaves, and 
became almost destitute; though in the end he received from 
the governmnet a tract of land which partially reimbursed 
him. Being driven to desperate straits, the priest tried a rather 
doubtful shift. He sold, or pretended to sell, a great natural 
meadow, known as la prairie du pont, which the people of 
Cahokia claimed as a common pasture for their cattle. His 
conduct drew forth a sharp remonstrance from the Cahokians, 
in the course of which they frankly announced that they 
believed the priest should confine himself to ecclesiastical mat- 
ters, and should not meddle with land grants, especially when 
the land he granted did not belong to him.^ 

It grew steadily more difficult to get the Creoles to furnish 
supplies ; Todd had to forbid the exportation of any provisions 
whatever, and, finally, the soldiers were compelled to levy on all 
that they needed. Todd paid for these impressed goods, as 
well as for what the contractors furnished, at the regulation 
prices — one-third in paper money and two-thirds in peltries ; 
and thus the garrisons at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes 
were supplied with powder, lead, sugar, flour, and, above all, 
hogsheads of taffia, of which they drank an inordinate quantity. 

The justices did not have very much work; in most of the 
cases that came before them the plaintiff and defendant were 
both of the same race. One piece of recorded testimony is 
rather amusing, being to the effect that "Monsieur Smith est 
un grand vilain coquin." ^ 

Yet there are two entries in the proceedings of the Creole 
courts for the summer of 1779, as preserved in Todd's "Record 
Book," which are of startling significance. To understand 
them it must be remembered that the Creoles were very igno- 
rant and superstitious, and that they one and all, including, 
apparently, even their priests, firmly believed in witchcraft and 
sorcery. Some of their negro slaves had been born in Africa, 

* State Department MSS., No. 48, p. 41. Petition of J. B. La Croix and 
A. Girardin. 

' This and most of the other statements for which no authority is quoted 
are based on Todd's MS. "Record Book." 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 411 

the others had come from the lower Mississippi or the West 
Indies; they practised the strange rites of voudooism, and a 
few were adepts in the art of poisoning. Accordingly, the 
French were always on the lookout lest their slaves should, 
by spell or poison, take their lives. It must also be kept in 
mind that the pardoning power of the commandant did not 
extend to cases of treason or murder — a witchcraft trial being 
generally one for murder — and that he was expressly forbidden 
to interfere with the customs and laws, or go counter to 
the prejudices of the inhabitants. 

At this time the Creoles were smitten by a sudden epidemic 
of fear that their negro slaves were trying to bewitch and 
poison them. Several of the negroes were seized and tried, 
and in June two were condemned to death. One, named Mo- 
reau, was sentenced to be hung outside Cahokia. The other, a 
Kaskaskian slave named Manuel, suffered a worse fate. He 
was sentenced "to be chained to a post at the water-side, and 
there to be burnt alive and his ashes scattered." ^ These 
two sentences, and the directions for their immediate execu- 
tion, reveal a dark chapter in the early history of Illinois. It 
seems a strange thing that, in the United States, three years 
after the Declaration of Independence, men should have been 
burnt and hung for witchcraft, in accordance with the laws 
and with the decision of the proper court. The fact that the 
victim, before being burned, was forced to make "honorable 
fine" at the door of the Catholic church shows that the priest 
at least acquiesced in the decision. The blame justly resting 
on the Puritans of seventeenth-century New England must like- 
wise fall on the Catholic French of eighteenth-century Illinois. 

Early in the spring of 1780 Clark left the country; he did 
not again return to take command, for after visiting the 
fort on the Mississippi, and spending the summer in the de- 
fense of Kentucky, he went to Virginia to try to arrange for 

*The entries merely record the sentences, with directions that they be 
immediately executed. But there seems very little doubt that they were for 
witchcraft, or voudooism, probably with poisoning at the bottom — and that 
they were actually carried out. See Mason's pamphlet, p. 59. 



412 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

an expedition against Detroit. Todd also left about the same 
time, having been elected a Kentucky delegate to the Virginia 
legislature. He afterward made one or two flying visits to 
Illinois, but exerted little influence over her destiny, leaving 
the management of affairs entirely in the hands of his deputy, 
or lieutenant-commandant for the time being. He usually chose 
for this position either Richard Winston, the Virginian, or 
else a Creole named Thimothe Demunbrunt. 

Todd's departure was a blow to the country; but Clark's 
was a far more serious calamity. By his personal influence he 
had kept the Indians in check, the Creoles contented, and the 
troops well fed and fairly disciplined. As soon as he v^ent, 
trouble broke out. The officers did not know how to support 
their authority; they were very improvident, and one or two 
became implicated in serious scandals. The soldiers soon grew 
turbulent, and there was constant clashing between the civil 
and military rulers. Gradually the mass of the Creoles became 
so angered with the Americans that they wished to lay their 
grievances before the French Minister at Philadelphia; and 
many of them crossed the Mississippi and settled under the 
Spanish flag. The courts rapidly lost their power, and the 
worst people, both Americans and Creoles, practised every kind 
of rascality with impunity. All decent men joined in clamoring 
for Clark's return; but it was impossible for him to come 
back. The freshets and the maladministration combined to 
produce a dearth, almost a famine, in the land. The evils were 
felt most severely in Vincennes, where Helm, the captain of 
the post, though a brave and capable man, was utterly unable 
to procure supplies of any kind. He did not hear of Clark's 
success against Piqua and Chillicothe until October. Then he 
wrote to one of the officers at the Falls, saying that he was 
"sitting by the fire with a piece of lightwood and two ribs 
of an old buflloe, which is all the meat we have seen this many 
days. I congratulate your success against the Shawanohs, but 
there's never doubts where that brave Col. Clark commands; 
we well know the loss of him in Illinois. . . . Excuse Haste as 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 413 

the Light wood's Just out and mouth watering for part of the 
two ribs." ^ 

In the fall of 1780 a Frenchman, named La Balme, led an 
expedition composed purely of Creoles against Detroit. He 
believed that he could win over the French at that place to 
his side, and thus capture the fort as Clark had captured Vin- 
cennes. He raised some fifty volunteers round Cahokia and 
Kaskaskia, perhaps as many more on the Wabash, and marched 
to the Maumee River. Here he stopped to plunder some Brit- 
ish traders ; and in November the neighboring Indians fell on 
his camp, killed him and thirty or forty of his men, and scat- 
tered the rest.^ His march had been so quick and unexpected 
that it rendered the British very uneasy, and they were much 
rejoiced at his discomfiture and death. 

The following year a new element of confusion was added. 
In 1779, Spain declared war on Great Britain. The Spanish 
commandant at New Orleans was Don Bernard de Galvez, 
one of the very few strikingly able men Spain has sent to the 
western hemisphere during the past two centuries. He was 
bold, resolute, and ambitious; there is reason to believe that 
at one time he meditated a separation from Spain, the estab- 
lishment of a Spanish-American empire, and the founding of 
a new imperial house. However this may be, he threw himself 
heart and soul into the war against Britain; and attacked 
British West Florida with a fiery energy worthy of Wolfe 
or Montcalm. He favored the Americans ; but it was patent 
to all that he favored them only the better to harass the 
British.^ 

Besides the Creoles and the British garrisons, there were 
quite a number of American settlers in West Florida. In 
the immediate presence of Spanish and Indian foes, these, for 
the most part, remained royalists. In 1778, a party of armed 
Americans, coming down the Ohio and Mississippi, tried to 

* Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. I, pp. 380, 382, 383, October 
24-29, 1780. 

""Haldimand MSS. De Peyster to Haldimand, November 16, 1780. 
' State Department MSS., No. 50, p. 109. 



414 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

persuade them to turn Whig, but, becoming embroiled with 
them, the miHtant missionaries were scattered and driven off. 
Afterward the royaHsts fought among themselves ; but this was 
a mere faction quarrel, and was soon healed. Toward the end 
of 1779, Galvez, with an army of Spanish and French Creole 
troops, attacked the forts along the Mississippi — Manchac, 
Baton Rouge, Natchez, and one or two smaller places — speedily 
carrying them and capturing their garrisons of British regu- 
lars and royalist militia. During the next eighteen months he 
laid siege to and took Mobile and Pensacola. While he was 
away on his expedition against the latter place, the royalist 
Americans around Natchez rose and retook the fort from the 
Spaniards ; but at the approach of Galvez they fled in terror, 
marching overland toward Georgia, then in the hands of the 
Tories. On the way they suffered great loss and damage from 
the Creeks and Choctaws. 

The Spanish commander at St. Louis was inspired by the 
news of these brilliant victories to try if he, too, could not 
gain a small wreath at the expense of Spain's enemies. Clark 
had already become thoroughly convinced of the duplicity of 
the Spaniards on the upper Mississippi ; he believed that they 
were anxious to have the British retake Illinois, so that they, in 
their turn, might conquer and keep it.^ They never had the 
chance to execute this plan ; but, on January 2, 1781, a Spanish 
captain, Don Eugenio Pierro, led a hundred and twenty men, 
chiefly Indians and Creoles, against the little French village, or 
fur post, of St. Joseph, where they burned the houses of 
one or two British traders, claimed the country round the 
Illinois River as conquered for the Spanish king, and forthwith 
returned to St. Louis, not daring to leave a garrison of any 
sort behind them, and being harassed on their retreat by the 
Indians. On the strength of this exploit Spain afterward 
claimed a large stretch of country to the east of the Missis- 
sippi. In reality it was a mere plundering foray. The British 
at once retook possession of the place, and, indeed, were for 
* Clark to Todd, March, 1780. "Virginia State Papers," vol. I, p. 338. 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 415 

some time ignorant whether the raiders had been Americans 
or Spaniards.^ Soon after the recapture, the Detroit authori- 
ties ^ sent a scouting-party to dislodge some IlHnois people 
who had attempted to make a settlement at Chicago. 

At the end of the year 1781 the unpaid troops in Vincennes 
were on the verge of mutiny, and it was impossible longer even 
to feed them, for the inhabitants themselves were almost starv- 
ing. The garrison was therefore withdrawn; and immediately 
the Wabash Indians joined those of the Miami, the Sandusky, 
and the Lakes in their raids on the settlements.^ By this time, 
however, Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, and the 
British were even more exhausted than the Americans. Some 
of the French partisans of the British at Detroit, such as 
Rocheblave and Lamothe, who had been captured by Clark, 
were eager for revenge, and desired to be allowed to try and 
retake Vincennes and the Illinois ; they saw that the Ameri- 
cans must either be exterminated or else the land abandoned 
to them.^ But the British commandant was in no condition 
to comply with their request, or to begin offensive operations. 
Clark had not only conquered the land, but he had held it 
firmly while he dwelt therein ; and even when his hand was 
no longer felt, the order he had established took some little 
time before crumbling. Meanwhile, his presence at the Falls, 
his raids into the Indian country, and his preparations for an 
onslaught on Detroit kept the British authorities at the latter 
place fully occupied, and prevented their making any attempt 
to recover what they had lost. By the beginning of 1782, the 
active operations of the Revolutionary War were at an end, and 
the worn-out British had abandoned all thought of taking the 
offensive anywhere, though the Indian hostilities continued 
with unabated vigor. Thus the grasp with which the Ameri- 

^Haldimand MSS. Haldimand to De Peyster, April lo, 1781. Report 
of Council at St. Joseph, March 11, 1781. 

'^ Ibid. Haldimand to De Peyster, May 19, 1782. This is the first record 
of an effort to make a permanent settlement at Chicago. 

' "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 502. 

* Haldimand MSS. Letter of Rocheblave, October 7, 1781 ; of Lamothe, 
April 24, 1782. 



4i6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

cans held the conquered country was not relaxed until all 
danger that it would be taken from them had ceased. 

In 1782, the whole Illinois region lapsed into anarchy and 
confusion. It was, perhaps, worst at Vincennes, where the 
departure of the troops had left the French free to do as 
they wished. Accustomed for generations to a master, they 
could do nothing with their new-found liberty beyond making 
it a curse to themselves and their neighbors. They had been 
provided with their own civil government in the shape of 
their elective court, but the judges had literally no idea of 
their proper functions as a governing body to administer 
justice. At first they did nothing whatever beyond meet 
and adjourn. Finally, it occurred to them that perhaps their 
official position could be turned to their own advantage. Their 
townsmen were much too poor to be plundered ; but there were 
vast tracts of fertile wild land on every side, to which, as far 
as they knew, there was no title, and which speculators as- 
sured them would ultimately be of great value. Vaguely re- 
membering Todd's opinion, that he had power to interfere 
under certain conditions with the settlement of the lands, and 
concluding that he had delegated this power, as well as others, 
to themselves, the justices of the court proceeded to make im- 
mense grants of territory, reciting that they did so under 
"les pouvoirs donncs a Mons'rs Les Magistrats dc la coiir de 
Vincennes par le Snr. Jean Todd, colonel et Grand Judge civil 
pour les Etats Unis" ; Todd's title having suffered a change 
and exaltation in their memories. They granted one another 
about fifteen thousand square miles of land round the Wabash; 
each member of the court in turn absenting himself for the 
day on which his associates granted him his share. 

This vast mass of virgin soil they sold to speculators at 
nominal prices, sometimes receiving a horse or a gun for a 
thousand acres. The speculators, of course, knew that their 
titles were worthless, and made haste to dispose of different 
lots at very low prices to intending settlers. These small buyers 
were those who ultimately suffered by the transaction, as they 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 417 

found they had paid for worthless claims. The speculators 
reaped the richest harvest; and it is hard to decide whether 
to be amused or annoyed at the childish and transparent ras- 
cality of the French Creoles.^ 

In the Illinois country proper the troops, the American set- 
tlers, speculators, and civil officials, and the creole inhabitants 
all quarrelled together indiscriminately. The more lawless 
newcomers stole horses from the quieter Creoles ; the worst 
among the French, the idle courenrs de hois, voyageurs, and 
trappers, plundered and sometimes killed the peaceable citizens 
of either nationality. The soldiers became little better than 
an unruly mob ; some deserted, or else, in company with other 
ruffians, both French and American, indulged in furious and 
sometimes murderous orgies, to the terror of the Creoles who 
had property. The civil authorities, growing day by day 
weaker, were finally shorn of all power by the military. This, 
however, was in nowise a quarrel between the French and the 
Americans. As already explained, in Todd's absence the po- 
sition of deputy was sometimes filled by a creole and sometimes 
by an American, He had been particular to caution them in 
writing to keep up a good understanding with the officers and 
troops, adding, as a final warning: "If this is not the case 
you will be unhappy." Unfortunately for one of the deputies, 
Richard Winston, he failed to keep up the good understanding, 
and, as Todd had laconically foretold, he in consequence speed- 
ily became very "unhappy." We have only his own account 
of the matter. According to this, in April, 1782, he was taken 
out of his house "in despite of the civil authority, disregarding 
the laws and on the malitious alugation of Jno. Williams and 
Michel Pevante." Thus a Frenchman and an American joined 
in the accusation, for some of the French supported the civil, 
others the military, authorities. The soldiers had the upper 
hand, however, and Winston records that he was forthwith 
"confined by tyrannick military force." From that time the 
authority of the law was at an end, and as the officers of 
* State Department MSS., Nos. 30 and 48. Law's "Vincennes." 



4i8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the troops had but little control, every man did what pleased 
him best. 

In January, 1781, the Virginia legislature passed an act 
ceding to Congress, for the benefit of the United States, all 
of Virginia's claim to the territory northwest of the Ohio; 
but the cession was not consummated until after the close of 
the war with Great Britain, and the only immediate effect of 
the act was to still further derange affairs in Illinois. The 
whole subject of the land cessions of the various States, by 
which the Northwest Territory became federal property, and 
the heart of the Union, can best be considered in treating of 
post-Revolutionary times. 

The French Creoles had been plunged in chaos. In their 
deep distress they sent to the powers that the chances of war 
had set above them petition after petition, reciting their wrongs 
and praying that they might be righted. There is one striking 
difference between these petitions and the similar requests and 
complaints made from time to time by the different groups 
of American settlers west of the Alleghanies. Both alike set 
forth the evils from which the petitioners suffered, and the 
necessity of governmental remedy. But whereas the Ameri- 
cans invariably asked that they be allowed to govern themselves, 
being delighted to undertake the betterment of their condition 
on their own account, the French, on the contrary, habituated 
through generations to paternal rule, were more inclined to 
request that somebody fitted for the task should be sent to 
govern them. They humbly asked Congress either to "imme- 
diately establish some form of government among them, and 
appoint officers to execute the same," or else "to nominate 
commissioners to repair to the Illinois and inquire into the 
situation." ^ 

One of the petitions is pathetic in its showing of the bewil- 
derment into which the poor Creoles were thrown as to who 
their governors really were. It requests "their Sovereign 

* State Department MSS., No. 30, p. 453. _ Memorial of Francois Car- 
bonneaux, agent for the inhabitants of Illinois. 



THE CONQUERED SETTLEMENTS 419 

Lords," ^ whether of the Congress of the United States or of 
the Province of Virginia, whichever might be the owner of the 
country, to nominate "a Heutenant or a governor, whomever 
it may please our Lords to send us." ^ The letter goes on to 
ask that this governor may speak French, so that he may 
preside over the court ; and it earnestly beseeches that the laws 
may be enforced and crime and wrong-doing put down with a 
strong hand. 

The conquest of the Illinois territory was fraught with 
the deepest and most far-reaching benefits to all the American 
people; it likewise benefited, in at least an equal degree, the 
boldest and most energetic among the French inhabitants, those 
who could hold their own among freemen, who could swim 
in troubled waters ; but it may well be doubted whether to 
the mass of the ignorant and simple Creoles it was not a curse 
rather than a blessing. 

^ "Nos Souverains Seigneurs." The letter is ill written and worse 
spelt, in an extraordinary French patois. State Department 'MSS., No. 
30, p. 459. It is dated December 3, 1782. Many of the surnames attached 
are marked with a cross ; others are signed. Two are given respectively 
as "Bicnvcnus iils" and "Blouin His." 

^ Ibid., "dc nomer un lieutenant ou un gouverneur tel qu'il plaira a nos 
Seigneurs de nous I' envoy er." 



CHAPTER XIX 
KENTUCKY UNTIL THE END OF THE REVOLUTION 

I 782-1 783 

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO prOVCd tO b€ Ken- 
tucky's year of blood. The British at Detroit had 
strained every nerve to drag into the war the entire 
Indian population of the Northwest. They had finally suc- 
ceeded in arousing even the most distant tribes — not to speak 
of the twelve thousand savages immediately tributary to De- 
troit.^ So lavish had been the expenditure of money and 
presents to secure the good- will of the savages and enlist their 
active services against the Americans, that it had caused serious 
complaint at headquarters.^ 

Early in the spring the Indians renewed their forays ; horses 
were stolen, cabins burned, and women and children carried 
off captive. The people were confined closely to their stockaded 
forts, from which small bands of riflemen sallied to patrol 
the country. From time to time these encountered marauding- 
parties, and in the fights that followed sometimes the whites, 
sometimes the reds, were victorious. 

One of these conflicts attracted wide attention on the border 
because of the obstinacy with which it was waged and the 
bloodshed that accompanied it. In March a party of twenty- 
five Wyandots came into the settlements, passed Boonesbor- 
ough, and killed and scalped a girl within sight of Estill's 
Station. The men from the latter, also to the number of 
twenty-five, hastily gathered under Captain Estill, and after 

' Haldimand MSS. Census for 1782, 11,402. 
'Ibid. Haldimand to De Peyster, April 10, October 6, 1781. 

420 



KENTUCKY 421 

two days' hot pursuit overtook the Wyandots. A fair stand-up 
fight followed, the better marksmanship of the whites being 
offset, as so often before, by the superiority their foes showed 
in sheltering themselves. At last victory declared for the In- 
dians. Estill had despatched a lieutenant and seven men to 
get round the Wyandots and assail them in the rear ; but either 
the lieutenant's heart or his judgment failed him; he took 
too long, and meanwhile the Wyandots closed in on the others, 
killing nine, including Estill, and wounding four, who, with 
their unhurt comrades, escaped. It is said that the Wyandots 
themselves suffered heavily.^ 

These various ravages and skirmishes were but the prelude 
to a far more serious attack. In July, the British captains 
Caldwell and McKee came down from Detroit with a party 
of rangers, and gathered together a great army of over a 
thousand Indians ^ — the largest body of either red men or 
white that was ever mustered west of the Alleghanies during 
the Revolution. They meant to strike at Wheeling; but while 
on their march thither were suddenly alarmed by the rumor 
that Clark intended to attack the Shawnee towns. ^ They at 
once countermarched, but on reaching the threatened towns 
found that the alarm had been groundless. Most of the sav- 
ages, with characteristic fickleness of temper, then declined to 
go farther ; but a body of somewhat over three hundred Hurons 
and Lake Indians remained. With these and their Detroit 
rangers, Caldwell and McKee crossed the Ohio and marched 
into Kentucky, to attack the small forts of Fayette County. 

^ Of course not as much as their foes. The backwoodsmen (like the 
regular officers of both the British and American armies in similar cases, 
as at Grant's and St. Clair's defeats) were fond of consoling themselves 
for their defeats by snatching at any wild tale of the losses of the victors. 
In the present instance, it is even possible that the loss of the Wyandots 
was very light instead of very heavy. 

"Haldimand MSS. Letter from Captain Caldwell, August 26, 1782; 
and letter of Captain McKee, August 28, 1782. These two letters are very 
important as they give for the first time the British and Indian accounts 
of the battle of the Blue Licks ; I print them as Notes I and II. 

' This rumor was caused by Clark's gunboat, which, as will be here- 
after mentioned, had been sent up to the mouth of the Licking; some 
Shawnees saw it, and thought Clark was preparing for an inroad. 



422 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Fayette lay between the Kentucky and the Ohio rivers, and 
was then the least populous and most exposed of the three 
counties into which the growing young commonwealth was 
divided. In 1782 it contained but five of the small stockaded 
towns in which all the early settlers were obliged to gather. 
The best defended and most central was Lexington, round 
which were grouped the other four — Bryan's (which was the 
largest), McGee's, McConnell's, and Boone's. Boone's Sta- 
tion, sometimes called Boone's new station, where the tranquil, 
resolute old pioneer at that time dwelt, must not be confounded 
with his former fort of Boonesborough, from which it was 
several miles distant, north of the Kentucky. Since the de- 
struction of Martin's and Ruddle's stations on the Licking, 
Bryan's on the south bank of the Elkhorn was left as the 
northernmost outpost of the settlers. Its stout, loopholed 
palisades enclosed some forty cabins, there were strong block- 
houses at the corners, and it was garrisoned by fifty good 
riflemen. 

These five stations were held by backwoodsmen of the usual 
Kentucky stamp, from the upcountry of Pennsylvania, Vir- 
ginia, and North Carolina. Generations of frontier life had 
made them with their fellows the most distinctive and typical 
Americans on the continent, utterly different from their Old 
World kinsfolk. Yet they still showed strong traces of the 
covenanting spirit, which they drew from the Irish-Presby- 
terian, the master strain in their mixed blood. For years they 
had not seen the inside of a church ; nevertheless, mingled with 
men who were loose of tongue and life, there still remained 
many Sabbath-keepers and Bible-readers, who studied their 
catechisms on Sundays, and disliked almost equally profane 
language and debauchery.^ 

An incident that occurred at this time illustrates well their 
feelings. In June, a fourth of the active militia of the county 
was ordered on duty, to scout and patrol the country. Ac- 
cordingly, forty men turned out under Captain Robert Pat- 

* McAfee MSS. 



KENTUCKY 423 

terson. They were given ammunition, as well as two pack- 
horses, by the Commissary Department. Every man was en- 
titled to pay for the time he was out. Whether he would 
ever get it was problematical; at the best it was certain to 
be given him in worthless paper money. Their hunters kept 
them supplied with game, and each man carried a small quan- 
tity of parched corn. 

The company was ordered to the mouth of the Kentucky 
to meet the armed rowboat sent by Clark from the Falls. 
On the way Patterson was much annoyed by a "very profane, 
swearing man" from Bryan's Station, named Aaron Reynolds. 
Reynolds was a good-hearted, active young fellow, with a biting 
tongue, not only given to many oaths, but likewise skilled in the 
rough, coarse banter so popular with the backwoodsmen. After 
having borne with him four days Patterson made up his mind 
that he would have to reprove him, and, if no amendment 
took place, send him home. He waited until, at a halt, Reynolds 
got a crowd round him, and began to entertain them "with 
oaths and wicked expressions," whereupon he promptl> 
stepped in "and observed to him that he was a very wicked 
and profane man," and that both the company as well as he, the 
captain, would thank him to desist. On the next day, how- 
ever, Reynolds began to swear again; this time Patterson not 
only reproved him severely, but also tried the effect of judi- 
cious gentleness, promising to give him a quart of spirits on 
reaching the boat if he immediately "quit his profanity and 
swearing." Four days afterward they reached the boat, and 
Aaron Reynolds demanded the quart of spirits. Patterson 
suggested a doubt as to whether he had kept his promise, 
whereupon Reynolds appealed to the company, then on parade, 
and they pronounced in his favor, saying that they had not 
heard him swear since he was reproved. Patterson, who him- 
self records the incident, concludes with the remark: ^ "The 

^ Patterson's paper, given by Colonel John Mason Brown, in his excel- 
lent pamphlet on the "Battle of the Blue Licks" (Franklin, Ky., 1882). 
I cannot forbear again commenting on the really admirable historic work 



424 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

spirits were drank." Evidently the company, who had so im- 
partially acted as judges between their fellow soldier and their 
superior officer, viewed with the same equanimity the zeal of 
the latter and the mixed system of command, entreaty, and 
reward by which he carried his point. As will be seen, the 
event had a striking sequel at the battle of the Blue Licks. 

Throughout June and July the gunboat patrolled the Ohio, 
going up to the Licking. Parties of backwoods riflemen, 
embodied as militia, likewise patrolled the woods, always keep- 
ing their scouts and spies well spread out, and exercising the 
greatest care to avoid being surprised. They greatly ham- 
pered the Indian war bands, but now and then the latter slipped 
by and fell on the people they protected. Early in August 
such a band committed some ravages south of the Kentucky, 
beating back with loss a few militia who followed it. Some 
of the Fayette men were about setting forth to try and cut off 
its retreat, when the sudden and unlooked-for approach of 
Caldwell and McKee's great war-party obliged them to bend 
all their energies to their own defense. 

The blow fell on Bryant's Station. The rangers and war- 
riors moved down through the forest with the utmost speed 
and stealth, hoping to take this, the northernmost of the stock- 
ades, by surprise. If they had succeeded, Lexington and the 
three smaller stations north of the Kentucky would probably 
likewise have fallen. 

The attack was made early on the morning of the i6th of 
August. Some of the settlers were in the cornfields, and 
the rest inside the palisade of standing logs; they were pre- 
paring to follow the band of marauders who had gone south 
of the Kentucky. A few outlying Indian spies were discov- 
ered, owing to their eagerness ; and the whites being put on 
their guard, the attempt to carry the fort by the first rush 
was, of course, foiled. Like so many other stations — but unlike 
Lexington — Bryan's had no spring within its walls ; and as 

now being done by Messrs. Brown, Durrett, Speed, and the other members 
of the Louisville "Filson Club." 



KENTUCKY 425 

soon as there was reason to dread an attack, it became a 
matter of vital importance to lay in a supply of water. It was 
feared that to send the men to the spring would arouse sus- 
picion in the minds of the hiding savages; and, accordingly, 
the women went down with their pails and buckets, as usual. 
The younger girls showed some nervousness, but the old house- 
wives marshalled them as coolly as possible, talking and laugh- 
ing together, and by their unconcern completely deceived the 
few Indians who were lurking near by ^ — for the main body 
had not yet come up. This advance-guard of the savages 
feared that, if they attacked the women, all chance of sur- 
prising the fort would be lost ; and so the water-carriers were 
suffered to go back unharmed.- Hardly were they within the 
fort, however, when some of the Indians found that they had 
been discovered, and the attack began so quickly that one or 
two of the men who had lingered in the corn-fields were killed, 

^ Caldwell's letter says that a small party of Indians was sent ahead 
first ; the watering incident apparently took place immediately on this 
small party being discovered. 

' This account rests on tradition ; it is recorded by McClung, a most 
untrustworthy writer ; his account of the battle of the Blue Licks is wrong 
from beginning to end. But a number of gentlemen in Kentucky have 
informed me that old pioneers whom they knew in their youth had told 
them that they had themselves seen the incident, and that, as written down, 
it was substantially true. So with Reynolds's speech to Girty. Of course, 
his exact words, as given by McClung, are incorrect; but 'Mr. L. C. 
Draper informs me that, in his youth, he knew several old men who had 
been in Bryan's Station and had themselves heard the speech. If it were 
not for this I should reject it, for the British accounts do not even men- 
tion that Girty was along, and do not hint at the incident. It was prob- 
ably an unauthorized ruse of Girty's. The account of the decoy-party of 
Indians is partially confirmed by the British letters. Both Marshall and 
McClung get this siege and battle very much twisted in their narratives; 
they make so many mistakes that it is difficult to know what portion of 
their accounts to accept. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to 
neglect all, even of McClung's statements. Thus Boone and Levi Todd 
in their reports make no mention of McGarry's conduct; and it might be 
supposed to be a traditional myth, but McClung's account is unexpectedly 
corroborated by Arthur Campbell's letter, hereafter to be quoted, which 
was written at the time. 

Marshall is the authority for Netherland's feat at the ford. Boone s 
description in the Filson "Narrative" differs on several points from his 
earlier official letter, one or two grave errors being made ; it is one of the 
incidents which shows how cautiously the Filson sketch must be used, 
though it is usually accepted as unquestionable authority. 



426 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

or else were cut off and fled to Lexington ; while, at the same 
time, swift-footed runners were sent out to carry the alarm 
to the different stockades and summon their riflemen to the 
rescue. 

At first but a few Indians appeared, on the side of the Lex- 
ington road; they whooped and danced defiance to the fort, 
evidently inviting an attack. Their purpose was to lure the 
defenders into sallying out after them, when their main body 
was to rush at the stockade from the other side. But they 
did not succeed in deceiving the veteran Indian fighters who 
manned the heavy gates of the fort, stood behind the loopholed 
walls, or scanned the country roundabout from the high block- 
houses at the corners. A dozen active young men were sent 
out on the Lexington road to carry on a mock skirmish with 
the decoy-party, while the rest of the defenders gathered be- 
hind the wall on the opposite side. As soon as a noisy but 
harmless skirmish had been begun by the sallying-party, the 
main body of warriors burst out of the woods and rushed 
toward the western gate. A single volley from the loopholes 
drove them back, while the sallying-party returned at a run and 
entered the Lexington gate unharmed, laughing at the success 
of their counter-stratagem. 

The Indians surrounded the fort, each crawling up as close 
as he could find shelter behind some stump, tree, or fence. 
An irregular fire began, the whites, who were better covered, 
having slightly the advantage, but neither side suffering 
much. This lasted for several hours, until early in the after- 
noon a party from Lexington suddenly appeared and tried 
to force its way into the fort. 

The runners who slipped out of the fort at the first alarm 
went straight to Lexington. There they found that the men 
had just started out to cut off the retreat of the marauding 
savages who were ravaging south of the Kentucky. Following 
their trail they speedily overtook the troops, and told of the 
attack on Bryan's. Instantly forty men under Major Levi 
Todd countermarched to the rescue. Being ignorant of the 



KENTUCKY 427 

strength of the Indians they did not wait for the others, but 
pushed boldly forward, seventeen being mounted and the others 
on foot.^ 

The road from Lexington to Bryan's for the last few hun- 
dred yards led beside a field of growing corn, taller than a 
man. Some of the Indians were lying in this field when they 
were surprised by the sudden appearance of the rescuers, and 
promptly fired on them. Levi Todd and the horsemen, who 
were marching in advance, struck spurs into their steeds, and, 
galloping hard through the dust and smoke, reached the fort 
in safety. The footmen were quickly forced to retreat toward 
Lexington ; but the Indians were too surprised by the unlooked- 
for approach to follow, and they escaped with the loss of one 
man killed and three wounded. - 

That night the Indians tried to burn the fort, shooting flam- 
ing arrows onto the roofs of the cabins and rushing up to the 
wooden wall with lighted torches. But they were beaten off 
at each attempt. When day broke they realized that it was 
hopeless to make any further effort, though they still kept 
up a desultory fire on the fort's defenders ; they had killed 
most of the cattle and pigs and some of the horses, and had 
driven away the rest. 

Girty, who was among the assailants, as a last shift, tried 
to get the garrison to surrender, assuring them that the Indians 
were hourly expecting reinforcements, including the artillery 
brought against Ruddle's and Martin's stations two years pre- 
viously; and that if forced to batter down the walls no quarter 
would be given to any one. Among the fort's defenders was 
young Aaron Reynolds, the man whose profanity had formerly 
roused Captain Patterson's ire; and he now undertook to be 
spokesman for the rest. Springing up into sight, he answered 
Girty in the tone of rough banter so dear to the backwoods- 
men, telling the renegade that he knew him well, and despised 
him, that the men in the fort feared neither cannon nor re- 

^ "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 300. McClung's and Collins's ac- 
counts of this incident are pure romance. 'Ibid. 



428 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

inforcements, and, if need be, could drive Girty's tawny fol- 
lowers back from the walls with switches; and he ended by 
assuring him that the whites, too, were expecting help, for 
the country was roused, and if the renegade and his followers 
dared to linger where they were for another twenty-four 
hours, their scalps would surely be sun-dried on the roofs of 
the cabins. 

The Indians knew well that the riflemen were mustering at 
all the neighboring forts ; and, as soon as their effort to treat 
failed, they withdrew during the forenoon of the I7th.^ They 
were angry and sullen at their discomfiture. Five of their 
number had been killed and several wounded. Of the fort's 
defenders four had been killed and three wounded. Among 
the children within its walls during the siege there was one, the 
youngest, a Kentucky-born baby, named Richard Johnson; 
over thirty years later he led the Kentucky mounted riflemen 
at the victory of the Thames, when they killed not only the 
great Indian chief Tecumseh, but also, it is said, the implacable 
renegade Simon Girty himself, then in extreme old age. 

All this time the runners sent out from Bryan's had been 
speeding through the woods, summoning help from each of 
the little walled towns. The Fayette troops quickly gathered. 
As soon as Boone heard the news he marched at the head of 
the men of his station, among them his youngest son Israel, 

^ There are four contemporary official reports of this battle : two Amer- 
ican, those of Boone and Levi Todd; and two British, those of AIcKee 
and Caldwell. All four agree that the fort was attacked on one day, the 
siege abandoned on the next, pursuit made on the third, and the battle 
fought on the fourth. Boone and Todd make the siege begin on August 
i6th and the battle take place on the 19th ; Caldwell makes the dates the 
15th and i8th. McKee makes them the i8th and 21st. I therefore take 
Boone's and Todd's dates. 

McClung and Marshall make the siege last three or four days instead 
of less than two. 

All the accounts of the battle of the Blue Licks, so far, have been very 
inaccurate, because the British reports have never been even known to exist, 
and the reports of the American commanders, printed in the "Virginia 
State Papers," have but recently seen the light. Mr. Whitsitt, in his 
recent excellent "Life of Judge Wallace," uses the latter, but makes the 
great mistake of incorporating into his narrative some of the most glaring 
errors of McClung and Marshall. 



KENTUCKY 429 

destined shortly to be slain before his eyes. The men from 
Lexington, McConnell's, and McGee's, rallied under John 
Todd, who was county lieutenant, and, by virtue of his com- 
mission in the Virginia line, the ranking officer of Kentucky, 
second only to Clark. Troops also came from south of the 
Kentucky River; Lieutenant-Colonel Trigg and Majors Mc- 
Garry and Harlan led the men from Harrodsburg, who were 
soonest ready to march, and likewise brought the news that 
Logan, their county lieutenant, was raising the whole force 
of Lincoln in hot haste, and would follow in a couple of days. 
These bands of rescuers reached Bryan's Station on the 
afternoon of the day the Indians had left. The men thus 
gathered were the very pick of the Kentucky pioneers ; sinewy 
veterans of border strife, skilled hunters and woodsmen, long 
wonted to every kind of hardship and danger. They were 
men of the most dauntless courage, but unruly and impatient 
of all control. Only a few of the cooler heads were willing 
to look before they leaped; and even their chosen and trusted 
leaders were forced to advise and exhort rather than to com- 
mand them. All were eager for battle and vengeance, and were 
excited and elated by the repulse that had just been inflicted 
on the savages ; and they feared to wait for Logan lest the foe 
should escape. Next morning they rode out in pursuit, one 
hundred and eighty-two strong, all on horseback, and all carry- 
ing long rifles. There was but one sword among them, which 
Todd had borrowed from Boone — a rough weapon, with short 
steel blade and buckhorn hilt. As with most frontier levies, 
the officers were in large proportion; for, owing to the sys- 
tem of armed settlement and half -military organization, each 
wooden fort, each little group of hunters or hard-fighting back- 
woods farmers, was forced to have its own captain, lieutenant, 
ensign, and sergeant.^ 

^ For the American side of the battle of Blue Licks, I take the contem- 
porary reports of Boone, Levi Todd, and Logan, "Virginia State Papers," 
vol. Ill, pp. 276, 280, 300, 333. Boone and Todd both are explicit that 
there were one hundred and eighty-two riflemen, all on horseback, and 
substantially agree as to the loss of the frontiersmen. Later reports under- 



430 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The Indians, in their unhurried retreat, followed the great 
buffalo trace that led to the Blue Licks, a broad road, beaten 
out through the forest by the passing and repassing of the 
mighty herds through countless generations. They camped on 
the farther side of the river; some of the savages had left, but 
there were still nearly three hundred men in all — Hurons and 
Lake Indians, with the small party of rangers.-^ 

The backwoods horsemen rode swiftly on the trail of their 
foes, and before evening came to where they had camped 
the night before. A careful examination of the camp-fires 
convinced the leaders that they were heavily outnumbered; 
nevertheless they continued the pursuit, and overtook the sav- 
ages early the following morning, the 19th of August. 

As they reached the Blue Licks, they saw a few Indians 
retreating up a rocky ridge that led from the north bank of 

estimate both the numbers and loss of the whites. Boone's "Narrative," 
written two years after the event, from memory, conflicts in one or two 
particulars with his earlier report. Patterson, writing long afterward, 
and from memory, falls into gross errors, both as to the number of troops 
and as to some of them being on foot ; his account must be relied on 
chiefly for his own adventures. Most of the historians of Kentucky give 
the affair very incorrectly. Butler follows Marshall ; but from the Clark 
papers he got the right number of men engaged. Marshall gives a few 
valuable facts ; but he is all wrong on certain important points. For in- 
stance, he says Todd hurried into action for fear Logan would supersede 
him in the command; but in reality Todd ranked Logan. McClung's 
ornate narrative, that usually followed, hangs on the very slenderest thread 
of truth ; it is mainly sheer fiction. Prolix, tedious Collins follows the 
plan he usually does when his rancorous prejudices do not influence him, 
and presents half a dozen utterly inconsistent accounts, with no effort 
whatever to reconcile them. He was an industrious collector of informa- 
tion, and gathered an enormous quantity, some of it very useful ; he 
recorded with the like complacency authentic incidents of the highest 
importance and palpable fabrications or irrelevant trivialities ; and it never 
entered his head to sift evidence or to exercise a little critical power and 
judgment. 

^ Caldwell says that he had at first "three hundred Indians and Rangers," 
but that before the battle "nigh 100 Indians left." McKee says that there 
were at first "upwards of three hundred Hurons and Lake Indians," 
besides the rangers and a very few Mingos, Delawares, and Shawnees. 
Later, he says of the battle : "We were not much superior to them in num- 
bers, they being aliout two hundred." 

Levi Todd put the number of the Indians at three hundred, which was 
pretty near the truth ; Boone thought it four hundred ; later writers exag- 
gerate wildly, putting it even at one thousand. 



KENTUCKY 431 

the river. The backwoodsmen halted on the south bank, and 
a short council was held. All turned naturally to Boone, the 
most experienced Indian fighter present, in whose cool courage 
and tranquil self-possession all confided. The wary old pioneer 
strongly urged that no attack be made at the moment, but 
that they should await the troops coming up under Logan. 
The Indians were certainly much superior in numbers to the 
whites ; they were aware that they were being followed by a 
small force, and from the confident, leisurely way in which 
they had managed their retreat, were undoubtedly anxious to 
be overtaken and attacked. The hurried pursuit had been quite 
proper in the first place, for if the Indians had fled rapidly 
they would surely have broken up into different bands, which 
could have been attacked on even terms, while delay would 
have permitted them to go off unscathed. But, as it was, the 
attack would be very dangerous ; while the delay of waiting for 
Logan would be a small matter, for the Indians could still 
be overtaken after he had arrived. 

Well would it have been for the frontiersmen had they fol- 
lowed Boone's advice.^ Todd and Trigg both agreed with him, 
and so did many of the cooler riflemen — among others a man 
named Netherland, whose caution caused the young hotheads 
to jeer at him as a coward. But the decision was not suf- 
fered to rest with the three colonels who nominally commanded. 
Doubtless the council was hasty and tumultuous, being held 
by the officers in the open, closely pressed upon and surrounded 
by a throng of eager, unruly soldiers, who did not hesitate 
to offer advice or express dissatisfaction. Many of the more 
headlong and impatient among the bold spirits looking on de- 
sired instant action ; and these found a sudden leader in Major 
Hugh McGarry. He was a man utterly unsuited to command 

* "Virginia State Papers," III, 337. Colonel Campbell's letter of Octo- 
ber 3, 1782. The letter is interesting as showing by contemporary authority 
that Boone's advice and McGarry's misbehavior are not mere matters of 
tradition. It is possible that there was some jealousy between the troops 
from Lincoln and those from Fayette; the latter had suffered much from 
the Indians, and were less rash in consequence; while many of the Lincoln 
men were hot for instant battle. 



432 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of any kind; and his retention in office after repeated acts of 
violence and insubordination shows the inherent weakness of 
the frontier militia system. He not only chafed at control, 
but he absolutely refused to submit to it; and his courage was 
of a kind better fitted to lead him into a fight than to make 
him bear himself well after it was begun. He wished no 
delay, and was greatly angered at the decision of the council ; 
nor did he hesitate to at once appeal therefrom. Turning 
to the crowd of backwoodsmen he suddenly raised the thrilling 
war-cry, and spurred his horse into the stream, waving his 
hat over his head and calling on all who were not cowards to 
follow him. The effect was electrical. In an instant all the 
hunter-soldiers plunged in after him with a shout, and splashed 
across the ford of the shallow river in huddled confusion. 

Boone and Todd had nothing to do but follow. On the 
other side they got the men into order, and led them on, the 
only thing that was possible under the circumstances. These 
two leaders acted excellently throughout; and they now did 
their best to bring the men with honor through the disaster 
into which they had been plunged by their own headstrong 
folly. 

As the Indians were immediately ahead, the array of battle 
was at once formed. The troops spread out into a single line. 
The right was led by Trigg, the centre by Colonel-Com- 
mandant Todd in person, with McGarry under him, and an 
advance-guard of twenty-five men under Harlan in front; 
while the left was under Boone. The ground was equally favor- 
able to both parties, the timber being open and good. But 
the Indians had the advantage in numbers, and were able to 
outflank the whites.^ 

In a minute the spies brought word that the enemy were 
close in front.^ The Kentuckians galloped up at speed to 

^ Levi Todd's letter, August 26, 1782. 

' It is absolutely erroneous to paint the battle as in any way a surprise. 
Boone says: "We discovered the enemy lying in wait for us; on this dis- 
covery we formed our columns into a single line, and marched up in their 
front." There was no ambush, except that of course the Indians, as usual, 



KENTUCKY 433 

within sixty yards of their foes, leaped from their horses, and 
instantly gave and received a heavy fire.^ Boone was the 
first to open the combat; and under his command the left 
wing pushed the Indians opposite them back for a hundred 
yards. The old hunter, of course, led in person; his men 
stoutly backed him up, and their resolute bearing and skilful 
marksmanship gave to the whites in this part of the line a 
momentary victory. But on the right of the Kentucky advance 
affairs went badly from the start. The Indians were thrown 
out so as to completely surround Trigg's wing. Almost as 
soon as the firing became heavy in front, crowds of painted 
warriors rose from some hollows of long grass that lay on 
Trigg's right and poured in a close and deadly volley. Rush- 
ing forward, they took his men in rear and flank, and rolled 
them up on the centre, killing Trigg himself. Harlan's ad- 
vance-guard was cut down almost to a man, their commander 
being among the slain. The centre was then assailed from 
both sides by overwhelming numbers. Todd did all he could 
by voice and example to keep his men firm and cover Boone's 
successful advance, but in vain. Riding to and fro on his 
white horse he was shot through the body, and mortally 
wounded. He leaped on his horse again, but his strength 
failed him ; the blood gushed from his mouth ; he leaned 
forward, and fell heavily from the saddle. Some say that 
his horse carried him to the river, and that he fell into its 
current. With his death the centre gave way; and of course 
Boone and the men of the left wing, thrust in advance, were 
surrounded on three sides. A wild rout followed, every one 
pushing in headlong haste for the ford. "He that could re- 
mount a horse was well off; he that could not, had no time 
for delay," wrote Levi Todd. The actual fighting had only 
occupied five minutes." 

sheltered themselves behind trees or in the long grass. From what Boone 
and Levi Todd say, it is evident that the firing began on both sides at the 
same time. Caldwell says the Indians fired one gun, whereupon the Ken- 
tuckians fired a volley. 
^Levi Todd's letter. 'Ibid. 



434 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

In a mad and panic race the Kentuckians reached the ford, 
which was fortunately but a few hundred yards from the battle- 
field, the Indians being mixed in with them. Among the first 
to cross was Netherland, whose cautious advice had been 
laughed at before the battle. No sooner had he reached the 
south bank, than he reined up his horse and leaped off, calling 
on his comrades to stop and cover the flight of the others ; and 
most of them obeyed him. The ford was choked with a strug- 
gling mass of horsemen and footmen, fleeing whites and fol- 
lowing Indians. Netherland and his companions opened a 
brisk fire upon the latter, forcing them to withdraw for a mo- 
ment and let the remainder of the fugitives cross in safety. 
Then the flight began again. The check that had been given 
the Indians allowed the whites time to recover heart and breath. 
Retreating in groups or singly through the forest, with their 
weapons reloaded, their speed of foot and woodcraft enabled 
such as had crossed the river to escape without further serious 
loss. 

Boone was among the last to leave the field. His son Israel 
was slain, and he himself was cut off from the river; but, 
turning abruptly to one side, he broke through the ranks of the 
pursuers, outran them, swam the river, and returned unharmed 
to Bryan's Station. 

Among the men in the battle were Captain Robert Patterson 
and young Aaron Reynolds. When the retreat began Patter- 
son could not get a horse. He was suffering from some old 
and unhealed wounds received in a former Indian fight, and 
he speedily became exhausted. As he was on the point of 
sinking, Reynolds suddenly rode up beside him, jumped off 
his horse, and, without asking Patterson whether he would ac- 
cept, bade him mount the horse and flee. Patterson did so, 
and was the last man over the ford. He escaped unhurt, 
though the Indians were running alongside and firing at 
him. Meanwhile Reynolds, who possessed extraordinary ac- 
tivity, reached the river in safety and swam across. He then 
sat down to take off his buckskin trousers, which, being soaked 



KENTUCKY 435 

through, hampered him much, and two Indians suddenly 
pounced on and captured him. He was disarmed and left in 
charge of one. Watching his chance, he knocked the savage 
down, and running off into the woods escaped with safety. 
When Patterson thanked him for saving his life, and asked 
him why he had done it, he answered, that ever since Patterson 
had reproved him for swearing, he had felt a strong and con- 
tinued attachment for him. The effect of the reproof, com- 
bined with his narrow escape, changed him completely, and 
he became a devout member of the Baptist Church. Patterson, 
to show the gratitude he felt, gave him a horse and saddle 
and a hundred acres of prime land, the first he had ever 
owned. 

The loss of the defeated Kentuckians had been very great. 
Seventy were killed outright, including Colonel Todd and Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Trigg, the first and third in command. Seven 
were captured, and twelve of those who escaped were badly 
wounded.^ The victors lost one of the Detroit rangers (a 
Frenchman), and six Indians killed and ten Indians wounded.^ 
Almost their whole loss was caused by the successful advance 
of Boone's troops, save what was due to Netherland when he 
rallied the flying backwoodsmen at the ford. 

Of the seven white captives four were put to death with 
torture, three eventually rejoining their people. One of them 
owed his being spared to a singular and amusing feat of 
strength and daring. When forced to run the gantlet he, by 
his activity, actually succeeded in reaching the council-house 
unharmed ; when almost to it, he turned, seized a powerful 
Indian and hurled him violently to the ground, and then, thrust- 
ing his head between the legs of another pursuer, he tossed 

^ Those are the figures of Boone's official report, and must be nearly 
accurate. The later accounts give all sorts of numbers. 

"Caldwell's letter. But there are some slight discrepancies between the 
letters of McKee and Caldwell. Caldwell makes the loss at Bryan's Sta- 
tion and the Blue Licks together twelve killed and twelve wounded; 
McKee says eleven killed and fourteen wounded. Both exaggerate the 
American loss, but not as much as the Americans exaggerated that of the 
Indians, Boone in his "Narrative" giving the wildest of all the estimates. 



436 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

him clean over his back, after which he sprang on a log, leaped 
up and knocked his heels together, crowed in the fashion of 
backwoods victors, and rallied the Indians as a pack of cowards. 
One of the old chiefs immediately adopted him into the tribe 
as his son. 

All the little forted villages north of the Kentucky, and those 
lying near its southern bank, were plunged into woe and mourn- 
ing by the defeat.-^ In every stockade, in almost every cabin, 
there was weeping for husband or father, son, brother, or 
lover. The best and bravest blood in the land had been shed 
like water. There was no one who had not lost some close 
and dear friend, and the heads of all the people were bowed and 
their hearts sore stricken. 

The bodies of the dead lay where they had fallen, on the 
hill-slope, and in the shallow river, torn by wolf, vulture, and 
raven, or eaten by fishes. In a day or two Logan came up 
with four hundred men from south of the Kentucky, tall Simon 
Kenton marching at the head of the troops, as captain of a 
company.^ They buried the bodies of the slain on the battle- 
field, in long trenches, and heaped over them stones and 
logs. Meanwhile, the victorious Indians, glutted with ven- 
geance, recrossed the Ohio and vanished into the northern 
forests. 

The Indian ravages continued throughout the early fall 
months; all the outlying cabins were destroyed, the settlers 
were harried from the clearings, and a station on Salt River 
was taken by surprise, thirty-seven people being captured. 
Stunned by the crushing disaster at the Blue Licks, and utterly 
disheartened and cast down by the continued ravages, many 

* Arthur Campbell, in the letter already quoted, comments with intense 
bitterness on the defeat, which, he says, was due largely to McGarry's 
"vain and seditious expressions." He adds that Todd and Trigg had 
capacity but no experience, and Boone experience but no capacity, while 
Logan was "a dull and narrow body," and Clark "a sot, if nothing worse." 
Campbell was a Holston Virginian, an able but very jealous man, who 
disliked the Kentucky leaders and indeed had no love for Kentucky itself ; 
he had strenuously opposed its first erection as a separate county. 

"McBride's "Pioneer Biography," I, 210. 



KENTUCKY 437 

of the settlers threatened to leave the country. The county 
officers sent long petitions to the Virginia legislature, complain- 
ing that the troops posted at the Falls were of no assistance in 
checking the raids of the Indians, and asserting that the opera- 
tions carried on by order of the Executive for the past eighteen 
months had been a detriment rather than a help. The utmost 
confusion and discouragement prevailed everywhere.^ 

At last the news of repeated disaster roused Clark into his 
old-time energy. He sent out runners through the settlements, 
summoning all the able-bodied men to make ready for a blow 
at the Indians. The pioneers turned with eager relief toward 

^"Virginia State Papers," III, pp. 301, 331. Letter of William Chris- 
tian, September 28th. Petition of Boone, Todd, Netherland, etc., Septem- 
ber nth. In Morehead's Address is a letter from Nathaniel Hart. He 
was himself, as a boy, witness of what he describes. His father, who had 
been Henderson's partner and bore the same name as himself, was from 
North Carolina. He founded in Kentucky a station known as White Oak 
Springs, and was slain by the savages during this year. The letter runs : 
"It is impossible at this day to make a just impression of the sufferings 
of the pioneers about the period spoken of. The White Oak Springs fort 
in 1782, with perhaps one hundred souls in it, was reduced in August to 
three fighting white men — and I can say with truth that for two or three 
weeks my mother's family never unclothed themselves to sleep, nor were 
all of them within that time at their meals together, nor was any house- 
hold business attempted. Food was prepared and placed where those who 
chose could eat. It was the period when Bryant's station was besieged, 
and for many days before and after that gloomy event we were in constant 
expectation of being made prisoners. We made application to Col. Logan 
for a guard and obtained one, but not until the danger was measurably 
over. It then consisted of two men only. Col. Logan did everything in 
his power, as County Lieutenant, to sustain the different forts — but it was 
not a very easy matter to order a married man from a fort where his 
family was to defend some other when his own was in imminent danger. 

"I went with my mother in January, 1783, to Logan's station to prove 
my father's will. He had fallen in the preceding July. Twenty armed 
men were of the party. Twenty-three widows were in attendance upon the 
court to obtain letters of administration on the estates of their husbands 
who had been killed during the past year." 

The letter also mentions that most of the original settlers of the fort 
were from Pennsylvania, "orderly respectable people and the men good 
soldiers. But they were unaccustomed to Indian warfare, and the con- 
sequence was that of some ten or twelve men all were killed but two or 
three." This incident illustrates the folly of the hope, at one time enter- 
tained, that the Continental troops, by settling in the West on lands granted 
them, would prove a good barrier against the Indians ; the best Conti- 
nentals in Washington's army would have been almost as helpless as 
British grenadiers in the woods. 



438 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the man who had so often led them to success. They answered 
his call with quick enthusiasm; beeves, pack-horses, and sup- 
plies were offered in abundance, and every man who could 
shoot and ride marched to the appointed meeting-places. The 
men from the eastern stations gathered at Bryan's, under 
Logan; those from the western, at the Falls, under Floyd. 
The two divisions met at the mouth of the Licking, where 
Clark took supreme command. On the 4th of November, he 
left the banks of the Ohio, and struck off northward through 
the forest, at the head of one thousand and fifty mounted rifle- 
men. On the loth he attacked the Miami towns. His approach 
was discovered just in time to prevent a surprise. The Indians 
hurriedly fled to the woods, those first discovered raising the 
alarm-cry, which could be heard an incredible distance, and 
thus warning their fellows. In consequence, no fight followed, 
though there was sharp skirmishing between the advance-guard 
and the hindermost Indians. Ten scalps were taken and seven 
prisoners, besides two whites being recaptured. Of Clark's 
men, one was killed and one wounded. The flight of the 
Indians was too hasty to permit them to save any of their 
belongings. All the cabins were burned, together with an 
immense quantity of corn and provisions — a severe loss at 
the opening of winter. McKee, the Detroit partisan, attempted 
to come to the rescue with what Indians he could gather, but 
was met and his force promptly scattered.^ Logan led a 
detachment to the head of the Miami, and burned the stores 
of the British traders. The loss to the savages at the beginning 
of cold weather was very great ; they were utterly cast down 
and panic-stricken at such a proof of the power of the whites, 
coming as it did so soon after the battle of the Blue Licks. 
The expedition returned in triumph, and the Kentuckians com- 
pletely regained their self-confidence; and though for ten years 
longer Kentucky suffered from the inroads of small parties of 

* Haldimand MSS. Letter of Alex. McKee, November 15, 1782. He 
makes no attempt to hide the severity of the blow ; his letter shows a 
curious contrast in tone to the one he wrote after the Blue Licks. He 
states that the victory has opened the road to Detroit to the Americans. 



KENTUCKY 439 

savages, it was never again threatened by a serious in- 
vasion.^ 

At the beginning of 1783, when the news of peace was spread 
abroad, immigration began to flow to Kentucky down the 
Ohio, and over the Wilderness Road, in a flood of which the 
vokmie dwarfed all former streams into rivulets. Indian 
hostilities continued at intervals throughout this year,^ but 
they were not of a serious nature. Most of the tribes con- 
cluded at least a nominal peace, and liberated over two hun- 
dred white prisoners, though they retained nearly as many 
more.^ Nevertheless in the spring one man of note fell victim 
to the savages, for John Floyd was waylaid and slain as he 
was riding out with his brother. Thus, within the space of 
eight months, two of the three county lieutenants had been 
killed, in battle or ambush. 

The inrush of new settlers was enormous,"* and Kentucky 
fairly entered on its second stage of growth. The days of the 
first game-hunters and Indian fighters were over. By this 
year the herds of the buffalo, of which the flesh and hides 
had been so important to the early pioneers, were nearly ex- 
terminated; though bands still lingered in the remote recesses 
of the mountains, and they were plentiful in Illinois. The 
land claims began to clash, and interminable litigation fol- 
lowed. This rendered very important the improvement in 
the judiciary system which was begun in March by the erection 
of the three counties into the "District of Kentucky," with 
a court of common law and chancery jurisdiction coextensive 
with its limits. The name of Kentucky, which had been 
dropped when the original county was divided into three, was 
thus permanently revived. The first court sat at Harrodsburg, 
but as there was no building where it could properly be held, 
it adjourned to the Dutch Reformed meeting-house six miles 
off. The first grand jury empanelled presented nine persons 
for selling liquor without license, eight for adultery and for- 

* "Virginia State Papers," p. 381. Clark's letter of November 27, 1782. 
'Ibid., p. 522. Letter of Benjamin Logan, August 11, 1783. 

* Pennsylvania Packet, No. 1079, August 12, 1783. * McAfee MSS. 



440 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

nication, and the clerk of Lincoln County for not keeping a 
table of fees; besides several for smaller offenses.^ A log 
court-house and a log jail were immediately built. 

Manufactories of salt were started at the Licks, where it 
was sold at from three to five silver dollars a bushel.^ This 
was not only used by the settlers for themselves, but for their 
stock, which ranged freely in the woods; to provide for the 
latter a tree was chopped down and the salt placed in notches 
or small troughs cut in the trunk, making it what was called 
a lick-log. Large grist-mills were erected at some of the sta- 
tions; wheat-crops were raised; and small distilleries were 
built. The gigantic system of river commerce of the Missis- 
sippi had been begun the preceding year by one Jacob Yoder, 
who loaded a flatboat at the old Redstone fort, on the Monon- 
gahela, and drifted down to New Orleans, where he sold his 
goods and returned to the Falls of the Ohio by a roundabout 
course, leading through Havana, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg. 
Several regular schools were started. There were already 
meeting-houses of the Baptist and Dutch Reformed congrega- 
tions, the preachers spending the week-days in clearing and 
tilling the fields, splitting rails, and raising hogs; in 1783 a 
permanent Presbyterian minister arrived, and a log church was 
speedily built for him. The sport-loving Kentuckians this year 
laid out a race-track at Shallowford Station. It was a straight 
quarter-of-a-mile course, within two hundred yards of the 
stockade ; at its farther end was a canebrake, wherein an Indian 
once lay hid and shot a rider, who was pulling up his horse 
at the close of a race. There was still but one ferry, that over 
the Kentucky River at Boonesborough ; the price of ferriage 
was three shillings for either man or horse. The surveying 
was still chiefly done by hunters, and much of it was in con- 
sequence very loose indeed.^ 

The first retail store Kentucky had seen since Henderson's, 
at Boonesborough, was closed in 1775, was established this 

* Marshall, I. 159. 'McAfee MSS. 

* McAfee MSS. Marshall, Collins, Brown's pamphlets. 



KENTUCKY 441 

year at the Falls; the goods were brought in wagons from 
Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio in flat- 
boats. The game had been all killed off in the immediate 
neighborhood of the town at the Falls, and Clark undertook 
to supply the inhabitants with meat, as a commercial specu- 
lation. Accordingly he made a contract with John Saunders, 
the hunter who had guided him on his march to the Illinois 
towns ; the latter had presumably forgiven his chief for having 
threatened him with death when he lost the way. Clark was 
to furnish Saunders with three men, a pack-horse, salt, and 
ammunition ; while Saunders agreed to do his best and be "as- 
siduously industrious" in hunting. Buffalo beef, bear's meat, 
deer hams, and bear oil were the commodities most sought 
after. The meat was to be properly cured and salted in camp, 
and sent from time to time to the Falls, where Clark was to 
dispose of it in market, a third of the price going to Saunders. 
The hunting season was to last from November ist to Janu- 
ary I5th.^ 

Thus the settlers could no longer always kill their own game ; 
and there were churches, schools, mills, stores, race-tracks, and 
markets in Kentucky. 

NOTE 



(Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXIII, p. 302.) 
Sir, 

My Letter of the 22nd & 23rd of July informed you of the reports 
brought us of the Enemy's motions at that time which was delivered by 
the Chiefs of the standing Stone Village & confirmed by Belts & Strings 
of Wampum in so earnest a manner that could not but gain Credit with 
us. We had upon this occasion the greatest Body of Indians collected 
to an advantageous peice of ground near the Picawee Village that have 
been assembled in this Quarter since the commencement of the War & 
perhaps may never be in higher spirits to engage the Enemy, when the 

^Original agreement in Durrett MSS.; bound volume of "Papers Relat- 
ing to G. R. Clark." This particular agreement is for 1784; but apparently 
he entered into several such in different years. 



442 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

return of Scouts from the Ohio informed us that the account we had 
received was false; this disappointment notwithstanding all our en- 
deavours to keep them together occasioned them to disperse in disgust 
with each other, the inhabitants of this Country who were the most 
immediately interested in keeping in a Body ware the first that broke 
off & though we advanced towards the Ohio with upwards of three 
hundred Hurons & Lake Indians few of the Delawares, Shawanese, or 
Mingoes followed us. On our arrival at the Ohio we remain'd still in 
uncertainty with respect to the Enemys motions, & it was thought best 
from hence to send Scouts to the Falls & that the main Body should 
advance into the Enemy's Country and endeavour to lead out a party 
from some of their Forts by which we might be able to gain some 
certain Intelligence accordingly we crossed the Ohio and arrived the 
i8th Inst, at one of the Enemy's settlements — call'd Bryans Station, but 
the Indians discovering their numbers prevented their coming out and 
the Lake Indians finding this rush'd up to the Fort and set several out 
Houses on fire but at too great a distance to touch the Fort the Wind 
blowing the Contrary way. The firing continued this day during which 
time a Party of about twenty of the Enemy approached a part that 
happened not to be Guarded & about one half of them reached it the 
rest being drove back by a few Indians who ware near the place, the 
next morning finding it to no purpose to keep up a fire longer upon the 
Fort as we were getting men killed, & had already several men wounded 
which ware to be carried, the Indians determined to retreat & the 20th 
reached the Blue Licks where we encamp'd near an advantageous Hill 
and expecting the enemy would pursue determined to wait for them 
keeping spies at the Lick who in the morning of the 2ist discovered 
them & at half past 7 o'clock we engaged them & in a short time totally 
defeated them, we ware not much superior to them in Numbers they 
being about two hundred picked men from the settlement of Kentucky. 
Commanded by the Colonels Todd, Trigg, Boon & Todd, with the 
Majors Harlin, and McGary most of whom fell in the action, from the 
best inquiry I could make upon the spot there was upwards of one 
hundred & forty killed & taken with near an hundred rifles several being 
thrown into a deep River that ware not recovered. It was said by the 
Prisoners that a Colonel Logan was expected to join them with one 
hundred men more we waited upon the ground to-day for him, but 
seeing there was not much probability of his coming we set off & 
crossed the ohio the second day after the action. Captain Caldwell 
& I arrived at this place last night with a design of sending some 
assistance to those who are to bring on the wounded people who are 
fourteen in number, we had Ten Indians kill'd with Mr. La Bute of the 
Indian Department who by sparing the life of one of the Enemy & 
endeavouring to take him Prisoner loss'd his own, to our disappointment 
we find no Provisions brought forward to this place or likely hood of 
any for some time, and we have entirely subsisted since we left this on 
what we got in the Woods, and took from the Enemy. The Prisoners 
all agree in their account that there is no talk of an Expedition from 



KENTUCKY 443 

that Quarter, nor indeed are they able without assistance from the 
Colonies, & that the Militia of the Country have been employed during 
the summer in Building the Fort at the Falls, & what they call a Row- 
Galley which has made one trip up the River to the Mouth of the big 
Miamis & occasioned that alarm that created us so much trouble, she 
carries one six pounder, six four pounders, & two two pounders & 
Row's eighty oars, she had at the big Bone Lick one hundred men but 
being chiefly draughts from the Militia many of them left her on 
different parts of the River. One of the Prisoners mentions the arrival 
of Boats lately from Fort Pitt & that Letters has pass'd between the 
Commanding officer of that place & Mr. Clark intimating that prepara- 
tion is making there for another Expedition into the Indian Country, we 
have since our arrival heard some thing of this matter and that the 
particulars has been forwarded to you, a Detachment of Rangers with 
a large party of Delawares, & Shawanese are gone that way who will 
be able to discover the truth of this matter. 

I am this day favoured with yours of the 6th Augt. containing the 
report of Isaac Gians concerning the Cruelties of the Indians. It is 
true they have made sacrifices to their revenge after the massacre 
of their women & children some being known to them to be perpetrators 
of it, but it was done in my absence or before I could reach any of the 
places to interfere. And I can assure you Sir that there is not a white 
person here wanting in their duty to represent to the Indians in the 
strongest terms the highest abhorence of such conduct as well as the 
bad consequences that may attend it to both them & us being countrary 
to the rule of carrying on war by Civilized nations, however it is not 
improbable that Gians may have exaggerated matters greatly being 
notoriously known for a disaffected person and concerned in sending 
Prisoners away with Intelligence to the Enemy at the time Captain Bird 
came out as we ware then informed. I flatter myself that I may by 
this time have an answer to the Letter I had the honor of writing to 
the Commandr. in Chief on leaving Detroit. Mr. Elliot is to be the 
Bearer of this who will be able to give you any farther information 
necessary respecting matters here. 

I am with respect Sir vour most obedient & Very Humble Servant 

A. McKee. 
Shawanese Country,! 
August 28th, 1782 J 
Major De Peyster, 



444 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



NOTE 
II 

(Haldimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXXIII, p. 297.) 

Extract of a letter from Captain Caldwell, dated at Wakitamiki, 
August 26, 1782: 

'"When I last had the pleasure of writing you, I expected to have 
struck at Wheeling as I was on my march for that place, but was over- 
taken by a Messenger from the Shawnese, who informed me that the 
Enemy was on their march for their Country, which obliged m.e to turn 
their way, and to my great mortification found the alarm false & that 
it was owing to a Gondals coming up to the mouth of Licking Creek, 
and landing some men upon the South side of the Ohio which when the 
Indians saw supposed it must be Clark. It would have been a lucky 
circumstance if they had come on, as I had eleven hundred Indians on 
the ground, and three hundred within a day's march of me. When the 
Report was contradicted They mostly left us, many of them had left 
their Towns no way equipped for War, as they expected as well as 
myself to fight in a few days, notwithstanding I was determined to pay 
the Enemy a visit with as many Indians as would follow me : accord- 
ingly I crossed the Ohio with three hundred Indians & Rangers, and 
Marched for Bryants Station on Kentuck, and surrounded the Fort the 
15th in the morning, & tried to draw 'em out by sending up a small 
party to try to take a Prisoner and shew themselves, but the Indians 
were in too great a hurry and the whole shewed too soon — I then saw 
it was in vain to wait any longer and so drew nigh the Fort, burnt 3 
Houses which are part of the Fort but the wind being contrary pre- 
vented it having the desired effect. Killed upwards of 300 Hogs, 150 
Head of Cattle, and a number of Sheep, took a number of Horses, 
puU'd up and destroy'd their Potatoes, cut down a great deal of their 
Corn, burn't their Hemp and did other considerable damage — by the 
Indians exposing themselves too much we had 5 Killed & 2 Wounded. 

"We retreated the i6th and came as far as Biddle's former Station, 
when nigh 100 Indians left me, as they went after their things they 
left at the Forks of Licking, and I took the Road by the blue Licks as 
it was nigher and the ground more advantageous in case the Enemy 
should pursue us — got to the Licks on the 17th and encamped. 

"On the 1 8th in the morning, one of my party that was watching the 
Road came in and told me the Enemy was within a mile of us, upon 
which I drew up to fight them — at Yz past seven they advanced in three 
Divisions in good order, they had spied some of us and it was the very 
place they expected to overtake us. — We had but fired one Gun till they 
gave us a Volley and stood to it very well for some time, 'till we rushed 
in upon them when they broke immediately. — We pursued for about 



KENTUCKY 445 

two miles, and as the enemy was mostly on horseback, it was in vain 
to follow further. 

"We killed and took one hundred and Forty six. Amongst the killed 
is Col. Todd the Commandr Col. Boon, Lt. Col. Trigg, Major Harlin 
who commanded their Infantry, Major Magara and a number more of 
their officers. Our loss is Monsr. La Bute killed, he died like a warrior 
fighting Arm to Arm, six Indians Killed and ten wounded — The Indians 
behaved extremely well, and no people could behave better than both 
Officers & men in general — The Indians I had with me were the Wyan- 
dots and Lake Indians — The Wyandots furnished me with what pro- 
visions I wanted, and behaved extremely well." 



CHAPTER XX 

THE HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS 
I 777-1 779 

THE history of Kentucky and the Northwest has now 
been traced from the date of the Cherokee war to the 
close of the Revolution. Those portions of the south- 
western lands that were afterward made into the State of 
Tennessee had meanwhile developed with almost equal rapidity. 
Both Kentucky and Tennessee grew into existence and power 
at the same time, and were originally settled and built up by 
precisely the same class of American backwoodsmen. But 
there were one or two points of difference in their methods 
of growth. Kentucky sprang up afar off in the wilderness, 
and as a separate entity from the beginning. The present 
State has grown steadily from a single centre, which was the 
part first settled; and the popular name of the commonwealth 
has always been Kentucky. Tennessee, on the other hand, did 
not assume her present name until a quarter of a century after 
the first exploration and settlement had begun; and the State 
grew from two entirely distinct centres. The first settlements, 
known as the Watauga, or afterward more generally as the 
Holston, settlements, grew up while keeping close touch with 
the Virginians, who lived around the Tennessee headwaters, 
and also in direct communication with North Carolina, to which 
State they belonged. It was not until 1779 that a portion of 
these Holston people moved to the bend of the Cumberland 
River and started a new community, exactly as Kentucky had 
been started before. At first this new community, known 
as the Cumberland settlement, was connected by only the loosest 

446 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 447 

tie with the Holston settlements. The people of the two places 
were not grouped together ; they did not even have a common 
name. The three clusters of Holston, Cumberland, and Ken- 
tucky settlements developed independently of one another, and 
though their founders were in each case of the same kind, they 
were at first only knit one to another by a lax bond of comrade- 
ship. 

In 1776, the Watauga pioneers probably numbered some 
six hundred souls in all. Having at last found out the State 
in which they lived, they petitioned North Carolina to be an- 
nexed thereto as a district or county. The older settlements 
had evidently been jealous of them, for they found it necessary 
to deny that they were, as had been asserted, "a lawless mob" ; 
it may be remarked that the Transylvanian colonists had been 
obliged to come out with a similar statement. In their petition 
they christened their country "Washington District," in honor 
of the great chief whose name already stood first in the hearts 
of all Americans. The document was written by Sevier. It 
set forth the history of the settlers, their land purchases from 
the Indians, their successful efforts at self-government, their 
military organization, with Robertson as captain, and finally 
their devotion to the Revolutionary cause; and recited their 
lack of proper authority to deal promptly with felons, mur- 
derers, and the like, who came in from the neighboring States, 
as the reason why they wished to become a self-governing 
portion of North Carolina.^ The legislature of the State 
granted the prayer of the petitioners, Washington District was 
annexed, and four representatives therefrom, one of them 
Sevier, took their seats that fall in the Provincial Congress at 
Halifax. But no change whatever was made in the govern- 
ment of the Watauga people until 1777. In the spring of that 
year laws were passed providing for the establishment of courts 
of pleas and quarter sessions in the district, as well as for 
the appointment of justices of the peace, sheriffs, and militia 

*The petition, drawn up in the summer of 'yd, was signed by 112 men. 
It is given in full by Ramsey, p. 138. See also Phelan, p. 40. 



448 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

officers; and in the fall the district was made a county, under 
the same name. The boundaries of Washington County were 
the same as those of the present State of Tennessee, and seem 
to have been outlined by Sevier, the only man who at that 
time had a clear idea as to what should be the logical and 
definite limits of the future State. 

The nominal change of government worked little real altera- 
tion in the way the Holston people managed their affairs. The 
members of the old committee became the justices of the new 
court, and, with a slight difference in forms, proceeded against 
all offenders with their former vigor. Being eminently prac- 
tical men, and not learned in legal technicalities, their decisions 
seem to have been governed mainly by their own ideas of 
justice, which, though genuine, were rough. As the war 
progressed and the Southern States fell into the hands of the 
British, the disorderly men who had streamed across the moun- 
tains became openly defiant toward the law. The Tories gath- 
ered in bands, and every man who was impatient of legal 
restraint, every murderer, horse thief, and highway robber in 
the community flocked to join them. The militia who hunted 
them down soon ceased to discriminate between Tories and 
other criminals, and the courts rendered decisions to the same 
effect. The caption of one indictment that has been preserved 
reads against the defendant "in Toryism." He was condemned 
to imprisonment during the war, half his goods was confis- 
cated to the use of the State, and the other half was turned 
over for the support of his family. In another case the court 
granted a still more remarkable order, upon the motion of 
the State attorney, which set forth that fifteen hundred pounds, 
due to a certain H., should be retained in the hands of the 
debtor, because "there is sufficient reason to believe that the 
said H's estate will be confiscated to the use of the State for 
his misdemeanours." 

There is something refreshing in the solemnity with which 
these decisions are recorded, and the evident lack of percep- 
tion on the part of the judges that their records would, to 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 449 

their grandchildren, have a distinctly humorous side. To 
Tories and evil-doers generally, the humor was doubtless very 
grim; but, as a matter of fact, the decisions, though certainly 
of unusual character, were needful and just. The friends of 
order had to do their work with rough weapons, and they 
used them most efficiently. Under the stress of so dire an 
emergency as that they confronted they were quite right in 
attending only to the spirit of law and justice, and refusing to 
be hampered by the letter. They would have discredited their 
own energy and hard common sense had they acted otherwise, 
and, moreover, would have inevitably failed to accomplish 
their purpose. 

In the summer of '78, when Indian hostilities almost en- 
tirely ceased, most of the militia were disbanded, and, in con- 
sequence, the parties of Tories and horse thieves sprang into 
renewed strength, and threatened to overawe the courts and 
government officers. Immediately the leaders among the 
Whigs, the friends of order and liberty, gathered together and 
organized a vigilance committee. The committee raised two 
companies of mounted riflemen, who were to patrol the coun- 
try and put to death all suspicious characters who resisted 
them or who refused to give security to appear before the 
committee in December. The proceedings of the committee 
were thus perfectly open; the members had no idea of acting 
secretly or against order. It was merely that in a time of 
general confusion they consolidated themselves into a body 
which was a most effective, though irregular, supporter of the 
cause of law. The mounted riflemen scoured the country and 
broke up the gangs of evil-doers, hanging six or seven of the 
leaders, while a number of the less prominent were brought 
before the committee, who fined some and condemned others 
to be whipped or branded. All of doubtful loyalty were com- 
pelled to take the test oath.^ 

* Haywood, p. 58. As Haywood's narrative is based largely on what the 
pioneers in their old age told him, his dates, and especially his accounts 
of the numbers and losses of the Indians in their battles, are often very 
inaccurate. In this very chapter he gives, with gross inaccuracy of detail, 



450 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Such drastic measures soon brought about peace; but it 
was broken again and again by similar risings and disturbances. 
By degrees, most of the worst characters fled to the Chero- 
kees or joined the British as their forces approached the up- 
country. Until the battle of King's Mountain, the pioneers 
had to watch the Tories as closely as they did the Indians; 
there was a constant succession of murders, thefts, and savage 
retaliations. Once a number of Tories attempted to sur- 
prise and murder Sevier in his own house; but the plot was 
revealed by the wife of the leader, to whom Sevier's wife 
had shown great kindness in her time of trouble. In conse- 
quence, the Tories were themselves surprised and their ring- 
leaders slain. Every man in the country was obliged to bear 
arms the whole time, not only because of the Indian warfare, 
but also on account of the inveterate hatred and constant col- 
lisions between the Whigs and the Loyalists. Many dark deeds 
were done, and though the Tories, with whom the criminal 
classes were in close alliance, were generally the first and chief 
offenders, yet the patriots cannot be held guiltless of murder- 
ous and ferocious reprisals. They often completely failed 
to distinguish between the offenders against civil order and 
those whose only crime was an honest, if mistaken, devotion 
to the cause of the king. 

Early in '78 a land-office was opened in the Holston settle- 
ments, and the settlers were required to make entries accord- 
ing to the North Carolina land-laws. Hitherto they had lived 
on their clearings undisturbed, resting their title upon pur- 
chase from the Indians and upon their own mutual agree- 
ments. The old settlers were given the prior right to the 
locations, and until the beginning of '79 in which to pay for 
them. Each head of a family was allowed to take up six 
hundred and forty acres for himself, one hundred for his wife, 
and one hundred for each of his children, at the price of forty 

an account of one of Sevier's campaigns as taking place in 1779, whereas 
it really occurred after his return from King's Mountain. There is, there- 
fore, need to be cautious in using him. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 451 

shillings per hundred acres, while any additional amount cost 
at the rate of one hundred shillings, instead of forty. All of 
the men of the Holston settlements were at the time in the 
service of the State as militia, in the campaign against the 
Indians; and when the land-office was opened, the money that 
was due them sufficed to pay for their claims. They thus 
had no difficulty in keeping possession of their lands, much 
to the disappointment of the land speculators, many of 
whom had come out at the opening of the office. Afterward, 
large tracts were given as bounty, or in lieu of pay, to the 
Revolutionary soldiers. All the struggling colonies used their 
wild land as a sort of military chest; it was often the only 
security of value in their possession. 

The same year that the land-office was opened, it was en- 
acted that the bridle-path across the mountains should be 
chopped out and made into a rough wagon-road.^ The 
following spring the successful expedition against the Chicka- 
maugas temporarily put a stop to Indian troubles. The grow- 
ing security, the opening of the land-office, and the increase of 
knowledge concerning the country, produced a great inflow 
of settlers in 1779, and from that time onward the volume of 
immigration steadily increased. 

Many of these newcomers were "poor whites,' or crackers; 
lank, sallow, ragged creatures, living in poverty, ignorance, 
and dirt, who regarded all strangers with suspicion as "out- 
landish folks. "^ With every chance to rise, these people re- 
mained mere squalid cumberers of the earth's surface, a rank, 
upcountry growth, containing within itself the seeds of vicious, 
idle pauperism and semicriminality. They clustered in little 
groups, scattered throughout the backwoods settlements, in 
strong contrast to the vigorous and manly people around them. 

By far the largest number of the newcomers were of the 
true hardy backwoods stock, fitted to grapple with the wilder- 

^ However this was not actually done until some years later. 
^Smyth's "Tour," I, 103, describes the upcountry crackers of North 
Carolina and Virginia. 



452 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ness and to hew out of it a prosperous commonwealth. The 
leading settlers began, by thrift and industry, to acquire what 
in the backwoods passed for wealth. Their horses, cattle, and 
hogs throve and multiplied. The stumps were grubbed out 
of the clearings, and different kinds of grains and roots were 
planted. Wings were added to the houses, and sometimes they 
were roofed with shingles. The little town of Jonesboro, the 
first that was not a mere stockaded fort, was laid off midway 
between the Watauga and the Nolichucky, 

As soon as the region grew at all well settled, clergymen 
began to come in. Here, as elsewhere, most of the frontiers- 
men who had any religion at all professed the faith of the 
Scotch-Irish; and the first regular church in this cradle-spot 
of Tennessee was a Presbyterian log meeting-house built near 
Jonesboro in 1777, and christened Salem Church. Its pastor 
was a pioneer preacher, who worked with fiery and success- 
ful energy to spread learning and religion among the early 
settlers of the Southwest, His name was Samuel Doak, He 
came from New Jersey, and had been educated in Princeton. 
Possessed of the vigorous energy that marks the true pioneer 
spirit, he determined to cast in his lot with the frontier folk. 
He walked through Maryland and Virginia, driving before 
him an old "flea-bitten grey" horse, loaded with a sackful of 
books ; crossed the Alleghanies, and came down along blazed 
trails to the Holston settlements. The hardy people among 
whom he took up his abode were able to appreciate his learn- 
ing and religion as much as they admired his adventurous and 
indomitable temper; and the stern, hard. Godfearing man be- 
came a most powerful influence for good throughout the whole 
formative period of the Southwest.^ 

Not only did he found a church, but near it he built a log 
high school, which soon became Washington College, the first 
institution of the kind west of the Alleghanies. Other churches, 

* See "East Tennessee a Hundred Years Ago," by the Honorable John 
Allison, Nashville, 1887, p. 8. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 453 

and many other schools, were soon built. Any young man or 
woman who could read, write, and cipher felt competent to 
teach an ordinary school; higher education, as elsewhere at 
this time in the West, was in the hands of the clergy. 

As elsewhere, the settlers were predominantly of Calvinistic 
stock ; for of all the then prominent faiths Calvinism was near- 
est to their feelings and ways of thought. Of the great rec- 
ognized creeds it was the most republican in its tendencies, 
and so the best suited to the backwoodsmen. They disliked 
Anglicanism as much as they abhorred and despised Romanism 
— theoretically at least, for practically then, as now, frontiers- 
men were liberal to one another's religion opinions, and the 
stanch friend and good hunter might follow whatever creed 
he wished, provided he did not intrude it on others. But back- 
woods Calvinism dififered widely from the creed at first taught. 
It was professed by thorough-going Americans, essentially free 
and liberty-loving, who would not for a moment have tolerated 
a theocracy in their midst. Their social, religious, and po- 
litical systems were such as naturally flourished in a country 
remarkable for its temper of rough and self -asserting equality. 
Nevertheless, the old Calvinistic spirit left a peculiar stamp 
on this wild border democracy. More than anything else, 
it gave the backwoodsmen their code of right and wrong. 
Though they were a hard, narrow, dogged people, yet they 
intensely believed in their own standards and ideals. Often 
warped and twisted, mentally and morally, by the strain of 
their existence, they at least always retained the fundamental 
virtues of hardihood and manliness. 

Presbyterianism was not, however, destined even here to 
remain the leading frontier creed. Other sects still more dem- 
ocratic, still more in keeping with backwoods life and thought, 
largely supplanted it. Methodism did not become a power 
until after the close of the Revolution; but the Baptists fol- 
lowed close on the heels of the Presbyterians. They, too, 
soon built log meeting-houses here and there, while their 



454 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

preachers cleared the forest and hunted elk and buffalo like 
the other pioneer settlers.^ 

To all the churches the preacher and congregation alike went 
armed, the latter leaning their rifles in their pews or near 
their seats, while the pastor let his stand beside the pulpit. On 
week-days the clergymen usually worked in the fields in com- 
pany with the rest of the settlers : all with their rifles close 
at hand and a guard stationed. In more than one instance 
when such a party was attacked by Indians the servant of 
the Lord showed himself as skilled in the use of carnal wea- 
pons as were any of his warlike parishioners. 

The leaders of the frontiersmen were drawn from among 
several families, which, having taken firm root, were growing 
into the position of backwoods gentry. Of course, the use 
of this term does not imply any sharp social distinctions in 
backwoods life, for there were none such. The poorest and 
richest met on terms of perfect equality, slept in one another's 
houses and dined at one another's tables. But certain fam- 
ilies, by dint of their thrift, the ability they showed in civil 
affairs, or the prowess of some of their members in time of 
war, had risen to acknowledged headship. 

The part of Washington County northwest of the Holston 
was cut off and made into the county of Sullivan by the North 
Carolina legislature in 1779. In this part the Shelbys were 
the leading family; and Isaac Shelby was made county lieu- 
tenant. It had been the debatable ground between Virginia 
and North Carolina, the inhabitants not knowing to which 
province they belonged, and sometimes serving the two gov- 
ernments alternately. When the line was finally drawn, old 
Evan Shelby's estate was found to lie on both sides of it; 
and as he derived his title from Virginia, he continued to 
consider himself a Virginian, and held office as such.^ 

In Washington County Sevier was treated as practically 
commander of the militia some time before he received his 

* Ramsey, 144. 

'Campbell MSS. "Notes," by Governor David Campbell. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 455 

commission as county lieutenant. He was rapidly becoming 
the leader of the whole district. He lived in a great, rambling 
one-story log house on the Nolichucky, a rude, irregular build- 
ing with broad verandas and great stone fireplaces. The rooms 
were in two groups, which were connected by a covered porch 
— a "dog alley," as old settlers still call it, because the dogs 
are apt to sleep there at night. Here he kept open house to 
all comers, for he was lavishly hospitable, and every one was 
welcome to bed and board, to apple-jack and cider, hominy 
and corn bread, beef, venison, bear meat, and wild fowl. When 
there was a wedding or a merrymaking of any kind he feasted 
the neighborhood, barbecuing oxen — that is, roasting them 
whole on great spits — and spreading board tables out under 
the trees. He was ever on the alert to lead his mounted rifle- 
men against the small parties of marauding Indians that came 
into the country. He soon became the best commander against 
Indians that there was on this part of the border, moving with 
a rapidity that enabled him again and again to overtake and 
scatter their roving parties, recovering the plunder and cap- 
tives, and now and then taking a scalp or two himself. His 
skill and daring, together with his unfailing courtesy, ready 
tact, and hospitality, gained him unbounded influence with 
the frontiersmen, among whom he was universally known as 
"Nolichucky Jack.''^ 

The Virginian settlements on the Holston, adjoining those 
of North Carolina, were in 1777 likewise made into a county 
of Washington. The people were exactly the same in char- 
acter as those across the line; and for some years the fates of 
all these districts were bound up together. Their inhabitants 
were still of the usual backwoods type, living by tilling their 
clearings and hunting; the elk and buffalo had become very 
scarce, but there were plenty of deer and bear, and in winter 
countless wild swans settled down on the small lakes and ponds. 
The boys followed these eagerly; one of them, when an old 

*'MSS. "Notes of Conversations with Old Pioneers," bj- Ramsey, in 
Tennessee Historical Society. Campbell MSS. 



456 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

man, used to relate how his mother gave him a pint of cream 
for every swan he shot, with the result that he got the pint 
almost every day.-^ 

The leading family among these Holston Virginians was 
that of the Campbells, who lived near Abingdon. They were 
frontier farmers, who chopped down the forest and tilled the 
soil with their own hands. They used the axe and guided 
the plough as skilfully as they handled their rifles; they were 
also mighty hunters, and accustomed from boyhood to In- 
dian warfare. The children received the best schooling the 
back country could afford, for they were a book-loving race, 
fond of reading and study as well as of outdoor sports. The 
two chief members were cousins, Arthur and William. Arthur 
was captured by the Northern Indians when sixteen, and was 
kept a prisoner among them several years; when Lord Dun- 
more's war broke out he made his escape, and acted as scout 
to the earl's army. He served as miltia colonel in different 
Indian campaigns, and was for thirty years a magistrate of 
the county; he was a man of fine presence, but of jealous, 
ambitious, overbearing temper. He combined with his fond- 
ness for Indian and hunter life a strong taste for books, and 
gradually collected a large library. So keen were the jeal- 
ousies, bred of ambition, between himself and his cousin Wil- 
liam Campbell, they being the two ranking officers of the local 
forces, that they finally agreed to go alternately on the different 
military expeditions ; and thus it happened that Arthur missed 
the battle of King's Mountain, though he was at the time 
county lieutenant. 

William Campbell stood next in rank. He was a man of 
giant strength, standing six feet two inches in height, and 
straight as a spear-shaft, with fair complexion, red hair, and 
piercing, light-blue eyes. A firm friend and stanch patriot, a 
tender and loving husband and father, gentle and courteous 
in ordinary intercourse with his fellows, he was, nevertheless, 

* "Sketch of Mrs. Elizabeth Russell," by her grandson, Thomas L. 
Preston, Nashville, 1888, p. 29. An interesting pamphlet. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 457 

if angered, subject to fits of raging wrath that impelled him to 
any deed of violence.^ He was a true type of the Roundheads 
of the frontier, the earnest, eager men who pushed the border 
ever farther westward across the continent. He followed In- 
dians and Tories with relentless and undying hatred; for the 
long list of backwoods virtues did not include pity for either 
public or private foes. The Tories threatened his life and the 
lives of his friends and families ; they were hand in glove with 
the outlaws who infested the borders, the murderers, horse 
thieves, and passers of counterfeit money. He hunted them 
down with a furious zest, and did his work with merciless 
thoroughness, firm in the belief that he thus best served the 
Lord and the nation. One or two of his deeds illustrate ad- 
mirably the grimness of the times, and the harsh contrast 
between the kindly relations of the border folks with their 
friends and their ferocity toward their foes. They show how 
the better backwoodsmen — the upright, churchgoing men, who 
loved their families, did justice to their neighbors, and sincerely 
tried to serve God — not only waged an unceasing war on the 
red and white foes of the State and of order, but carried it 
on with a certain ruthlessness that indicated less a disbelief 
in, than an utter lack of knowledge of, such a virtue as leniency 
to enemies. 

One Sunday, Campbell was returning from church with 
his wife and some friends, carrying his baby on a pillow in 
front of his saddle, for they were all mounted. Suddenly a 
horseman crossed the road close in front of them, and was 
recognized by one of the party as a noted Tory. Upon being 
challenged, he rode off at full speed. Instantly Campbell 
handed the baby to a negro slave, struck spur into his horse, 
and galloping after the fugitive, overtook and captured him. 
The other men of the party came up a minute later. 
Several recognized the prisoner as a well-known Tory; he 
was riding a stolen horse ; he had on him letters to the British 
^Campbell MSS. "Notes," by Governor David Campbell. 



458 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

agents among the Cherokees, arranging for an Indian rising. 
The party of returning churchgoers were accustomed to the 
quick and summary justice of lynch-law. With stern gravity 
they organized themselves into a court. The prisoner was 
adjudged guilty, and was given but a short shrift ; for the horse- 
men hung him to a sycamore-tree before they returned to the 
road where they had left their families. 

On another occasion, while Campbell was in command of a 
camp of militia, at the time of a Cherokee outbreak, he wrote 
a letter to his wife, a sister of Patrick Henry, that gives us 
a glimpse of the way in which he looked at Indians. His 
letter began, "My dearest Betsy;" in it he spoke of his joy 
at receiving her "sweet and affectionate letter;" he told how 
he had finally got the needles and pins she wished, and how 
pleased a friend had been with the apples she had sent him. 
He urged her to buy a saddle-horse, of which she had spoken, 
but to be careful that it did not start nor stumble, which were 
bad faults, "especially in a woman's hackney." In terms of 
endearment that showed he had not sunk the lover in the hus- 
band, he spoke of his delight at being again in the house where 
he had for the first time seen her loved face, "from which 
happy moment he dated the hour of all his bliss," and besought 
her not to trouble herself too much about him, quoting to her 
Solomon's account of a good wife, as reminding him always 
of her; and he ended by commending her to the peculiar care 
of Heaven. It was a letter that it was an honor to a true 
man to have written ; such a letter as the best of women and 
wives might be proud to have received. Yet in the middle 
of it he promised to bring a strange trophy to show his tender 
and God-fearing spouse. He was speaking of the Indians; 
how they had murdered men, women, and children near by, 
and how they had been beaten back ; and he added : "I have now 
the scalp of one who was killed eight or nine miles from my 
house about three weeks ago. The first time I go up I shall 
take it along to let you see it." Evidently, it was as natural for 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 459 

him to bring home to his wife and children the scalp of a 
slain Indian as the skin of a slain deer.^ 

The times were hard, and they called for men of flinty fibre. 
Those of softer, gentler mould would have failed in the midst 
of such surroundings. The iron men of the border had a 
harsh and terrible task allotted them; and though they did it 
roughly, they did it thoroughly and on the whole well. They 
may have failed to learn that it is good to be merciful, but 
at least they knew that it is still better to be just and strong 
and brave ; to see clearly one's rights, and to guard them with 
a ready hand. 

These frontier leaders were generally very jealous of one 
another. The ordinary backwoodsmen vied together as hunters, 
axemen, or wrestlers ; as they rose to leadership their rivalries 
grew likewise, and the more ambitious, who desired to become 
the civil and military chiefs of the community, were sure to 
find their interests clash. Thus old Evan Shelby distrusted 
Sevier; Arthur Campbell was jealous of both Sevier and Isaac 
Shelby; and the two latter bore similar feelings to William 
Campbell. When a great crisis occurred all these petty envies 
were sunk; the nobler natures of the men came uppermost; 
and they joined with unselfish courage, heart and hand, to de- 
fend their country in the hour of her extreme need. But 
when the danger was over the old jealousies cropped out again. 

Some one or other of the leaders was almost always employed 
against the Indians. The Cherokees and Creeks were never ab- 
solutely quiet and at peace. After the chastisement inflicted 
upon the former by the united forces of all the Southern back- 
woodsmen, treaties were held with them,- in the spring and 
summer of 1777. The negotiations consumed much time, the 
delegates from both sides meeting again and again to complete 
the preliminaries. The credit of the State being low, Isaac 
Shelby furnished on his own responsibility the goods and 
provisions needed by the Virginians and Holston people in 

* See Preston's pamphlet on Mrs. Russell, pp. 11-18. 
*See ante, vol. X, chap. XI. 



46o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

coming to an agreement with the Otari, or Upper Cherokees;^ 
and some land was formally ceded to the whites. 

But the chief Dragging Canoe would not make peace. Gath- 
ering the boldest and most turbulent of the young braves about 
him, he withdrew to the great whirl in the Tennessee,- at the 
crossing-place of the Creek war-parties, when they followed 
the trail that led to the bend of the Cumberland River. Here 
he was joined by many Creeks, and also by adventurous and 
unruly members from almost all the Western tribes ^ — Chick- 
asaws, Choctaws, and Indians from the Ohio. He soon had a 
great band of red outlaws round him. These freebooters were 
generally known as the Chickamaugas, and they were the most 
dangerous and least controllable of all the foes who menaced 
the Western settlements. Many Tories and white refugees 
from border justice joined them, and shared in their misdeeds. 
Their shifting villages stretched from Chickamauga Creek to 
Running Water. Between these places the Tennessee twists 
down through the sombre gorges by which the chains of the 
Cumberland ranges are riven in sunder. Some miles below 
Chickamauga Creek, near Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain 
towers aloft into the clouds; at its base the river bends round 
Moccasin Point, and then rushes through a gap between Wal- 
den's Ridge and the Raccoon Hills. Then for several miles it 
foams through the winding Narrows between jutting cliffs and 
sheer rock walls, while in its boulderstrewn bed the swift tor- 
rent is churned into whirlpools, cataracts, and rapids. Near the 
Great Crossing, where the war-parties and hunting-parties were 
ferried over the river, lies Nick-a-jack Cave, a vast cavern in 
the mountainside. Out of it flows a stream, up which a canoe 
can be paddled two or three miles into the heart of the moun- 
tain. In these high fastnesses, inaccessible ravines, and gloomy 
caverns the Chickamaugas built their towns, and to them they 

^ Shelby's MS. Autobiography, copy in Col. Durrett's library. 
'"Virginia State Papers," III, 271; the settlers always spoke of it as 
the "suck" or "whirl." * Shelby MSS. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 461 

retired with their prisoners and booty after every raid on the 
settlements. 

No sooner had the preliminary treaty been agreed to in the 
spring of 'yy than the Indians again began their ravages. In 
fact, there never was any real peace. After each treaty the 
settlers would usually press forward into the Indian lands, and 
if they failed to do this the young braves were sure themselves 
to give offense by making forays against the whites. On this 
occasion the first truce or treaty was promptly broken by the 
red men. The young warriors refused to be bound by the 
promises of the chiefs and head men, and they continued their 
raids for scalps, horses, and plunder. Within a week of the 
departure of the Indian delegates from the treaty-ground in 
April, twelve whites were murdered and many horses stolen. 
Robertson, with nine men, followed one of these marauding- 
parties, killed one Indian, and retook ten horses ; on his return 
he was attacked by a large band of Creeks and Cherokees, and 
two of his men were wounded; but he kept hold of the recap- 
tured horses and brought them safely in.-^ On the other hand, 
a white scoundrel killed an Indian on the treaty-ground in 
July, the month in which the treaties were finally completed 
in due form. By act of the legislature, the Holston militia 
were kept under arms throughout most of the year, companies 
of rangers, under Sevier's command, scouring the woods and 
cane-brakes, and causing such loss to the small Indian war- 
parties that they finally almost ceased their forays. Bands of 
these Holston rangers likewise crossed the mountains by 
Boone's trail, and went to the relief of Boonesborough and St. 
Asaphs, in Kentucky, then much harassed by the northwestern 
warriors.- Though they did little or no fighting, and stayed 
but a few days, they yet by their presence brought welcome 
relief to the hard-pressed Kentuckians.^ Kentucky, during her 

^ Charles Robertson to Captain-General of North Carolina, April 27, 1777. 

"See ante, vol. X, chap. XIII. 

^Monette (followed by Ramsey and others) hopelessly confuses these 
small relief expeditions ; he portrays Logan as a messenger from Boone's 
Station, is in error as to the siege of the latter, etc. 



462 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

earliest and most trying years, received comparatively little 
help from sorely beset Virginia ; but the backwoodsmen of the 
upper Tennessee valley — on both sides of the boundary — did 
her real and lasting service. 

In 1778, the militia were disbanded, as the settlements were 
very little harried ; but as soon as the vigilance of the whites 
was relaxed the depredations and massacres began again, and 
soon became worse than ever. Robertson had been made su- 
perintendent of Indian affairs for North Carolina; and he 
had taken up his abode among the Cherokees at the town of 
Chota in the latter half of the year 1777. He succeeded in 
keeping them comparatively quiet and peaceable during 1778 
and until his departure, which took place the following year, 
when he went to found the settlements on the Cumberland 
River. 

But the Chickamaugas refused to make peace, and in their 
frequent and harassing forays they were from time to time 
joined by parties of young braves from all the Cherokee towns 
that were beyond the reach of Robertson's influence — that is, 
by all save those in the neighborhood of Chota. The Chick- 
asaws and Choctaws likewise gave active support to the king's 
cause ; the former scouted along the Ohio, the latter sent bands 
of young warriors to aid the Creeks and Cherokees in their 
raids against the settlements.^ 

The British agents among the Southern Indians had re- 
ceived the letters Hamilton sent them after he took Vincennes ; 
in these they were urged at once to send out parties against 
the frontier, and to make ready for a grand stroke in the 
spring. In response, the chief agent, who was the Scotch 
Captain Cameron, a noted royalist leader, wrote to his official 
superior that the instant he heard of any movement of the 
northwestern Indians he would see that it was backed up, for 
the Creeks were eager for war, and the Cherokees likewise were 
ardently attached to the British cause ; as a proof of the devo- 

* Haldimand MSS. Letter of Rainsford and Tait to Hamilton, April 9, 
1779. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 463 

tion of the latter, he added : ^ "They keep continually killing 
and scalping in Virginia, North Carolina, and the frontier of 
Georgia, although the rebels are daily threatening to send in 
armies from all quarters and extirpate the whole tribe." It 
would certainly be impossible to desire better proof than that 
thus furnished by this royal officer, both of the ferocity of 
the British policy toward the frontiersmen, and of the treach- 
ery of the Indians, who so richly deserved the fate that after- 
ward befell them. 

While waiting for the signal from Hamilton, Cameron or- 
ganized two Indian expeditions against the frontier, to aid 
the movements of the British army that had already conquered 
Georgia. A great body of Creeks, accompanied by the Brit- 
ish commissaries and most of the white traders (who were, 
of course, Tories), set out in March to join the king's forces 
at Savannah; but when they reached the frontier they scat- 
tered out to plunder and ravage. A body of Americans fell 
on one of their parties and crushed it; whereupon the rest re- 
turned home in a fright, save about seventy, who went on and 
joined the British. At the same time three hundred Chicka- 
maugas, likewise led by the resident British commissaries, 
started out against the Carolina frontier. But Robertson, at 
Chota, received news of the march, and promptly sent warning 
to the Holston settlements;^ and the Holston men, both of 
Virginia and North Carolina, decided immediately to send 
an expedition against the homes of the war-party. This would 
not only at once recall them from the frontier, but would give 
them a salutary lesson. 

Accordingly, the backwoods levies gathered on Clinch River, 
at the mouth of Big Creek, April loth, and embarked in pir- 
ogues and canoes to descend the Tennessee. There were several 

^ Ibid., Series B, vol. CXVII, p. 131. Letter of Alexander Cameron, 
July 15, 1779. 

'Ibid. "A rebel commissioner in Chote being mformed of their move- 
ments here sent express into Holston river." This "rebel commissioner" 
was in all probability Robertson. 



464 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

hundred of them ^ under the command of Evan Shelby; Isaac 
Shelby having collected the supplies for the expedition by his 
individual activity and on his personal credit. The backwoods- 
men went down the river so swiftly that they took the Chicka- 
maugas completely by surprise, and the few warriors who 
were left in the villages fled to the wooded mountains without 
offering any resistance. Several Indians were killed ~ and 
a number of their towns were burnt, together with a great deal 
of corn ; many horses and cattle were recaptured, and among 
the spoils were large piles of deer-hides, owned by a Tory 
trader. The troops then destroyed their canoes and returned 
home on foot, killing game for their food; and they spread 
among the settlements many stories of the beauty of the lands 
through which they had passed, so that the pioneers became 
eager to possess them. The Chickamaugas were alarmed and 
confounded by this sudden stroke; their great war band re- 
turned at once to the burned towns, on being informed by 
swift runners of the destruction that had befallen them. All 
thoughts of an immediate expedition against the frontier were 
given up ; peace-talks were sent to Evan Shelby ; ^ and through- 
out the summer the settlements were but little molested. 

Yet all the while they were planning further attacks; at the 
same time that they sent peace-talks to Shelby they sent war- 
talks to the northwestern Indians, inviting them to join in a 
great combined movement against the Americans.'* When the 

* State Department MSS., No. 51, vol. II, p. 17, a letter from the British 
agents among the Creeks to Lord George Germain, of July 12, 1779. It 
says "near 300 rebels" ; Haywood, whose accounts are derived from oral 
tradition, says one thousand. Cameron's letter of July isth in the Haldi- 
mand MSS. says seven hundred. Some of them were Virginians who had 
been designed for Clark's assistance in the Illinois campaign, but who 
were not sent him. Shelby made a very clever stroke, but it had no per- 
manent effect, and it is nonsense to couple it, as has been recently done, 
with Clark's campaigns. 

^ Cameron in his letter says four, which is probably near the truth. 
Haywood says forty, which merely represents the backwoods tradition on 
the subject, and is doubtless a great exaggeration. 

'State Department MSS., No. 71, vol. I, p. 255, letter of Evan Shelby, 
June 4, 1779. 

M-Ialdimand MSS., Series B, vol. CXVII, p. 157. A talk from the 
Cherokees to the envoy from the Wabash and other Indians, July 12, 1779. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1777-1779 465 

news of Hamilton's capture was brought it wrought a momen- 
tary discouragement; but the efforts of the British agents were 
unceasing, and by the end of the year most of the southwest- 
ern Indians were again ready to take up the hatchet. The 
rapid successes of the royal armies in the Southern States had 
turned the Creeks into open antagonists of the Americans, and 
their war-parties were sent out in quick succession, the British 
agents keeping alive the alliance by a continued series of gifts 
— for the Creeks were a venal, fickle race whose friendship could 
not otherwise be permanently kept.^ 

As for the Cherokees, they had not confined themselves to 
sending the war-belt to the northwestern tribes, while pro- 
fessing friendship for the Americans; they had continued in 
close communication with the British Indian agents, assuring 
them that their peace negotiations were only shams, intended 
to blind the settlers, and that they would be soon ready to take 
up the hatchet.^ This time Cameron himself marched into the 
Cherokee country with his company of fifty Tories, brutal 
outlaws, accustomed to savage warfare, and ready to take part 
in the worst Indian outrages.^ The ensuing Cherokee war 

One paragraph is interesting: "We cannot forget the talk you brought us 
some years ago into this Nation, which was to take up the hatchet against 
the Virginians. We heard and listened to it with great attention and 
before the time that was appointed to lift it we took it up and struck the 
Virginians. Our Nation was alone and surrounded by them. They were 
numerous and their hatchets were sharp; and after we had lost some of our 
best warriors, we were forced to leave our towns and corn to be burnt by 
them, and now we live in the grass as you see us. But we are not yet 
conquered, and to convince you that we have not thrown away your talk 
here are 4 strands of whampums we received from you when you came 
before as a messenger to our Nation." 

^ State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress. "Intercepted 
Letters," No. 51, vol. II. Letter of British agents Messrs. Rainsford, 
Mitchell, and McCullough, of July 12, 1779. "The present unanimity of 
the Creek Nation is no doubt greatly owing to the rapid successes of His 
Majesty's forces in the Southern provinces, as they have now no cause 
to apprehend the least danger from the Rebels. . . . We have found by 
experience that without presents the Indians are not to be depended on." 

'Ibid., No. 71, vol. II, p. 189. Letter of David Tait to Oconostota. 
"I believe what you say about telling lies to the Virginians to be very 
right." 

^ Ibid., No. 51, vol. II. Letter of the three agents. "The Cherokees are 
now exceedingly well disposed. Mr. Cameron is now among them. . . . 



466 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

was due not to the misdeeds of the settlers — though doubtless 
a few lawless whites occasionally did wrong to their red neigh- 
bors — but to the short-sighted treachery and ferocity of the 
savages themselves, and especially to the machinations of the 
Tories and British agents. The latter unceasingly incited 
the Indians to ravage the frontier with torch and scalping- 
knife. They deliberately made the deeds of the torturers and 
woman-killers their own, and this they did with the approba- 
tion of the British Government, and to its merited and lasting 
shame. 

Yet by the end of 1779 the inrush of settlers to the Hol- 
ston regions had been so great that, as with Kentucky, there 
was never any real danger after this year that the whites would 
be driven from the land by the red tribes whose hunting- 
ground it once had been. 

Captain Cameron has his company of Loyal Refugees with him, who are 
well qualified for the service they are engaged in. . . . He carried up 
with him a considerable quantity of presents and ammunition which are 
absolutely necessary to engage the Indians to go upon service." 



CHAPTER XXI 

KING'S MOUNTAIN 

1780 

DURING the Revolutionary War the men of the West 
for the most part took no share in the actual campaign- 
ing against the British and Hessians. Their duty was 
to conquer and hold the wooded wilderness that stretched west- 
ward to the Mississippi ; and to lay therein the foundations 
of many future commonwealths. Yet at a crisis in the great 
struggle for liberty, at one of the darkest hours for the patriot 
cause, it was given to a band of Western men to come to the 
relief of their brethren of the seaboard and to strike a telling 
and decisive blow for all America. When the three Southern 
provinces lay crushed and helpless at the feet of Cornwallis, 
the Holston backwoodsmen suddenly gathered to assail the 
triumphant conqueror. Crossing the mountains that divided 
them from the beaten and despairing people of the tide-water 
region, they killed the ablest lieutenant of the British com- 
mander, and at a single stroke undid all that he had done. 

By the end of 1779 the British had reconquered Georgia. 
In May, 1780, they captured Charleston, speedily reduced all 
South Carolina to submission, and then marched into the old 
North State. Cornwallis, much the ablest of the British gen- 
erals, was in command over a mixed force of British, Hessian, 
and loyal American regulars, aided by Irish volunteers and 
bodies of refugees from Florida. In addition, the friends to 
the king's cause, who were very numerous in the southern- 
most States, rose at once on the news of the British succffesses, 
and thronged to the royal standards; so that a number of 

467 



468 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

regiments of Tory militia were soon embodied. McGillivray, 
the Creek chief, sent bands of his warriors to assist the British 
and Tories on the frontier, and the Cherokees hkewise came 
to their help. The patriots for the moment abandoned hope, 
and bowed before their victorious foes. 

Cornwallis himself led the main army northward against the 
American forces. Meanwhile, he intrusted to two of his most 
redoubtable officers the task of scouring the country, raising 
the Loyalists, scattering the patriot troops that were still em- 
bodied, and finally crushing out all remaining opposition. These 
two men were Tarleton, the dashing cavalryman, and Ferguson 
the rifleman, the skilled partisan leader. 

Patrick Ferguson, the son of Lord Pitfour, was a Scotch 
soldier, at this time about thirty-six years old, who had been 
twenty years in the British army. He had served with dis- 
tinction against the French in Germany, had quelled a Carib 
uprising in the West Indies, and in 1777 was given the com- 
mand of a company of riflemen in the army opposed to Wash- 
ington.^ He played a good part at Brandywine and Monmouth. 
At the former battle he was wounded by an American sharp- 
shooter, and had an opportunity, of which he forbore taking 
advantage, to himself shoot an American officer of high rank, 
who unsuspectingly approached the place where he lay hid ; 
he always insisted that the man he thus spared was no less 
a person than Washington. While suffering from his wound, 
Sir William Howe disbanded his rifle corps, distributing it 
among the light companies of the different regiments ; and its 
commander in consequence became an unattached volunteer 
in the army. But he was too able to be allowed to remain long 
unemployed. When the British moved to New York he was 
given the command of several small independent expeditions, 
and was successful in each case; once, in particular, he sur- 
prised and routed Pulaski's legion, committing great havoc 

^ "Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Fergu- 
son," by Adam Ferguson, LL.D., Edinburgh, 1817, p. 11. The copy was 
kindly lent me by Mr. George H. Moore of the Leno.x Library. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 469 

with the bayonet, which was always with him a favorite wea- 
pon. His energy and valor attracted much attention; and 
when a British army was sent against Charleston and the 
South he went along as a lieutenant-colonel of a recently raised 
regular regiment, known as the American Volunteers.^ 

Cornwallis speedily found him to be peculiarly fitted for 
just such service as was needed; for he possessed rare per- 
sonal qualities. He was of middle height and slender build, 
with a quiet serious face and a singularly winning manner; 
and withal, he was of literally dauntless courage, of hopeful, 
eager temper, and remarkably fertile in shifts and expedients. 
He was particularly fond of night attacks, surprises, and swift, 
sudden movements generally, and was unwearied in drilling 
and disciplining his men. Not only was he an able leader, 
but he was also a finished horseman, and the best marksman 
with both pistol and rifle in the British army. Being of quick, 
inventive mind, he constructed a breech-loading rifle, which 
he used in battle with deadly effect. This invention had been 
one of the chief causes of his being brought into prominence 
in the war against America, for the British officers especially 
dreaded the American sharpshooters.^ It would be difficult 
to imagine a better partisan leader, or one more fitted by his 
feats of prowess and individual skill to impress the minds of 
his followers. Moreover, his courtesy stood him in good stead 
with the people of the country; he was always kind and civil, 
and would spend hours in talking affairs over with them and 
pointing out the mischief of rebelling against their lawful sov- 
ereign. He soon became a potent force in winning the doubt- 
ful to the British side, and exerted a great influence over the 
Tories; they gathered eagerly to his standard, and he drilled 
them with patient perseverance. 

* Though called volunteers, they were simply a regular regiment raised 
in America instead of England; Ferguson's "Memoir," p. 30, etc., always 
speaks of them as regulars. The British gave an alisurd number of titles 
to their various officers ; thus Ferguson was a brigadier-general of militia, 
lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, a major in the army, etc. 

^Ferguson's "Memoir," p. il. 



470 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

After the taking of Charleston, Ferguson's volunteers and 
Tarleton's legion, acting separately or together, speedily de- 
stroyed the different bodies of patriot soldiers. Their activity 
and energy was such that the opposing commanders seemed 
for the time being quite unable to cope with them, and the 
American detachments were routed and scattered in quick suc- 
cession.^ On one of these occasions, the surprise at Monk's 
Corners, where the American commander, Huger, was slain, 
Ferguson's troops again had a chance to show their skill in 
the use of the bayonet. 

Tarleton did his work with brutal ruthlessness ; his men 
plundered and ravaged, maltreated prisoners, outraged women, 
and hung without mercy all who were suspected of turning 
from the Loyalist to the Whig side. His victories were almost 
always followed by massacres ; in particular, when he routed 
with small loss a certain Captain Buford, his soldiers refused 
to grant quarter, and mercilessly butchered the beaten Amer- 
icans." 

Ferguson, on the contrary, while quite as valiant and suc- 
cessful a commander, showed a generous heart, and treated 
the inhabitants of the country fairly well. He was especially 
incensed at any outrage upon women, punishing the offender 
with the utmost severity, and as far as possible he spared his 
conquered foes. Yet even Ferguson's tender mercies must 
have seemed cruel to the Whigs, as may be judged by the 
following extract from a diary kept by one of his lieutenants : ^ 
"This day Col. Ferguson got the rear guard in order to do 
his King and country justice by protecting friends and widows, 
and destroying rebel property; also to collect live stock for 
the use of the army. All of which we effect as we go by de- 
stroying furniture, breaking windows, etc., taking all their 

^"History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781," Lieutenant-Colonel Tarle- 
ton, London (1787). See also the "Strictures" thereon, by Roderick 
Mackenzie, London, same date. 

' It is worth while remembering that it was not merely the Tories who 
were guilty of gross crimes ; the British regulars, including even some of 
their officers, often behaved with abhorrent brutality. 

' Diary of Lieutenant Anthony Allaire, entry for March 24, 1780. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 471 

horned cattle, horses, mules, sheep, etc., and their negroes to 
drive them." When such were the authorized proceedings of 
troops under even the most merciful of the British commanders, 
it is easy to guess w^hat deeds were done by uncontrolled bodies 
of stragglers bent on plunder. 

When Ferguson moved into the back country of the two 
Carolinas still worse outrages followed. In the three southern- 
most of the thirteen rebellious colonies there was a very large 
Tory party.^ In consequence, the struggle in the Carolinas 
and Georgia took the form of a ferocious civil war. Each 
side in turn followed up its successes by a series of hangings 
and confiscations, while the lawless and violent characters 
fairly revelled in the confusion. Neither side can be held 
guiltless of many and grave misdeeds ; but, for reasons already 
given, the bulk — but by no means the whole — of the criminal 
and disorderly classes espoused the king's cause in the regions 
where the struggle was fiercest. They murdered, robbed, or 
drove ofif the Whigs in their hour of triumph; and in turn 
brought down ferocious reprisals on their own heads and on 
those of their luckless associates. 

Moreover, Cornwallis and his under-officers tried to cow 
and overawe the inhabitants by executing some of the men 
whom they deemed the chief and most criminal leaders of the 
rebellion, especially such as had sworn allegiance and then 
again taken up arms ; " of course, retaliation in kind followed. 
Ferguson himself hung some men; and though he did his best 
to spare the country people, there was much plundering and 
murdering by his militia. 

In June, he marched to upper South Carolina, moving to 
and fro, calling out the loyal militia. They responded en- 
thusiastically, and three or four thousand Tories were embodied 

* Gates MSS., passim, for July-October, 1780. E. g., letter of Mr. Ram- 
sey, August 9, 1780, describes bow "the Scotch are all lying out," the 
number of Tories in the "Drowning Creek region," their resistance to the 
levy of cattle, etc. In these colonies, as in the middle colonies, the Tory 
party was very strong. 

^ Gates MSS. See letter from Sumter, August 12th, and passim, for 
instances of hanging by express command of the British officers. 



472 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

in different bands. Those who came to Ferguson's own stand- 
ard were divided into companies and regiments, and taught 
the rudiments of discipHne by himself and his subalterns. He 
soon had a large but fluctuating force under him, in part com- 
posed of good men, loyal adherents of the king (these being 
very frequently recent arrivals from England, or else Scotch 
Highlanders), in part also of cutthroats, horse thieves, and 
desperadoes of all kinds who wished for revenge on the Whigs 
and were eager to plunder them. His own regular force was 
also mainly composed of Americans, although it contained 
many Englishmen. His chief subordinates were Lieutenant- 
Colonels De Peyster ^ and Cruger ; the former usually serving 
under him, the latter commanding at Ninety-Six. They were 
both New York Loyalists, members of old Knickerbocker fam- 
ilies ; for in New York many of the gentry and merchants stood 
by the king. 

Ferguson moved rapidly from place to place, breaking up 
the bodies of armed Whigs; and the latter now and then skirm- 
ished fiercely with similar bands of Tories, sometimes one side 
winning, sometimes the other. Having reduced South Caro- 
lina to submission, the British commander then threatened 
North Carolina ; and Colonel McDowell, the commander of 
the Whig militia in that district, sent across the mountains 
to the Holston men, praying that they would come to his help. 
Though suffering continually from Indian ravages, and mo- 
mentarily expecting a formidable inroad, they responded nobly 
to the call. Sevier remained to patrol the border and watch 
the Cherokees, while Isaac Shelby crossed the mountains with 
a couple of hundred mounted riflemen early in July. The 
mountain-men were joined by McDowell, with whom they 
found also a handful of Georgians and some South Caro- 
linians who, when their States were subdued, had fled north- 
ward, resolute to fight their oppressors to the last. 

The arrival of the mountain-men put new life into the 
dispirited Whigs. On July 30th, a mixed force, under Shelby 

* A relative of the Detroit commander. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 473 

and two or three local militia colonels, captured Thickett's fort, 
with ninety Tories, near the Pacolet. They then camped at 
the Cherokee ford of Broad River, and sent out parties of 
mounted men to carry on a guerilla or partisan warfare against 
detachments, not choosing to face Ferguson's main body. After 
a while they moved south to Cedar Spring. Here, on the 
8th of August, they were set upon by Ferguson's advanced 
guard of dragoons and mounted riflemen. These they repulsed, 
handling the British rather roughly; but, as Ferguson himself 
came up, they fled, and though he pursued them vigorously, he 
could not overtake them.^ 

On the 1 8th of the month, the mountain-men, assisted as 
usual by some parties of local militia, all under their various 
colonels, performed another feat — one of those swift, sudden 
strokes so dear to the hearts of these rifle-bearing horsemen. 
It was of a kind peculiarly suited to their powers; for they 
were brave and hardy, able to thread their way unerringly 
through the forests and fond of surprises; and, though they 
always fought on foot, they moved on horseback, and there- 
fore with great celerity. Their operations should be carefully 
studied by all who wish to learn the possibilities of mounted 

* Shelby's MS. Autobiography, and the various accounts he wrote of 
these affairs in his old age (which Haywood and most of the other local 
American historians follow or amplify) certainly greatly exaggerate the 
British force and loss, as well as the part Shelby himself played, com- 
pared to the Georgia and Carolina leaders. The Americans seemed to have 
outnumbered Ferguson's advance-guard, which was less than two hundred 
strong, about three to one. Shelby's account of the Musgrove affair is 
especially erroneous. See p. 120 of L. C. Draper's "King's Mountain and 
Its Heroes" (Cincinnati, 1881). Mr. Draper has with infinite industry and 
research gathered all the published and unpublished accounts and all the 
traditions concerning the battle; his book is a mine of information on the 
subject. He is generally quite impartial but some of his conclusions are 
certainly biassed ; and the many traditional statements, as well as those 
made by very old men concerning events that took place fifty or sixty 
years previously, must be received with extreme caution. A great many 
of them should never have been put in the book at all. When they take 
the shape of anecdotes, telling how the British are overawed by the mere 
appearance of the Americans on some occasion (as pp. 94, 95, etc.), they 
must be discarded at once as absolutely worthless, as well as ridiculous. 
The British and Tory accounts, being forced to explain ultimate defeat, 
are, if possible, even more untrustworthy, when taken solely by them- 
selves, than the American. 



474 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

riflemen. Yet they were impatient of discipline or of regular 
service, and they really had no one commander. The differ- 
ent militia officers combined to perform some definite piece of 
work, but, like their troops, they were incapable of long-con- 
tinued campaigns ; .and there were frequent and bitter quar- 
rels between the several commanders, as well as between the 
bodies of men they led. 

It seems certain that the mountaineers were, as a rule, more 
formidable fighters than the lowland militia, beside or against 
whom they battled; and they formed the main strength of 
the attacking-party that left the camp at the Cherokee ford be- 
fore sunset on the 17th. Ferguson's army was encamped 
southwest of them, at Fair Forest Shoals ; they marched round 
him, and went straight on, leaving him in their rear. Some- 
times they rode through open forest, more often they followed 
the dim wood roads ; their horses pacing or cantering steadily 
through the night. As the day dawned they reached Mus- 
grove's Ford, on the Enoree, having gone forty miles. Here 
they hoped to find a detachment of Tory militia; but it had 
been joined by a body of provincial regulars, the united force 
being probably somewhat more numerous than that of the 
Americans. The latter were discoverd by a patrol, and the 
British after a short delay marched out to attack them. The 
Americans in the meantime made good use of their axes, fell- 
ing trees for a breastwork, and when assailed they beat back 
and finally completely routed their assailants.^ 

However, the victory was of little effect, for just as it was 
won word was brought to Shelby that the day before Corn- 
wallis had met Gates at Camden, and had not only defeated 

^ Shelby's account of this action, written in his old age, is completely at 
fault ; he not only exaggerates the British force and loss, but he likewise 
greatly overestimates the number of the Americans — always a favorite 
trick of his. Each of the militia colonels, of course, claimed the chief 
share of the glory of the day. Haywood, Ramsey, and even Phelan sim- 
ply follow Shelby. Draper gives all the different accounts ; it is quite 
impossible to reconcile them, but all admit that the British were defeated. 

I have used the word "British" ; but though there were some English- 
men and Scotchmen among the Tories and provincials, they were mainly 
Loyalist Americans. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 475: 

but practically destroyed the American army; and on the very 
day of the fight on the Enoree, Tarleton surprised Sumter, 
and scattered his forces to the four winds. The panic among, 
the Whigs was tremendous, and the mountaineers shared it. 
They knew that Ferguson, angered at the loss of his detach- 
ment, would soon be in hot pursuit, and there was no time 
for delay. The local militia made ofif in various directions; 
while Shelby and his men pushed straight for the mountains, 
crossed them, and returned each man to his own home. Fer- 
guson speedily stamped out the few remaining sparks of re- 
bellion in South Carolina, and crossing the boundary into the 
North State he there repeated the process. On September 
1 2th, he caught McDowell and the only remaining body of 
militia at Cane Creek, of the Catawba, and beat them thor- 
oughly,^ the survivors, including their commander, fleeing over 
the mountains to take refuge with the Holston men. Except 
for an occasional small guerilla-party, there was not a single 
organized body of American troops left south of Gates's broken 
and dispirited army. 

All the Southern lands lay at the feet of the conquerors. 
The British leaders, overbearing and arrogant, held almost 
unchecked sway throughout the Carolinas and Georgia; and 
looking northward they made ready for the conquest of Vir- 
ginia.- Their right flank was covered by the waters of the 
ocean, their left by the high mountain barrier-chains, beyond 
which stretched the interminable forest ; and they had as little 
thought of danger from one side as from the other. 

Suddenly and without warning, the wilderness sent forth 
a swarm of stalwart and hardy riflemen, of whose very exis- 
tence the British had hitherto been ignorant."^ Riders spurring 

^ Draper apparently indorses the absurd tradition that makes this a 
Whig victory instead of a defeat. It seems certain (see Draper), con- 
trary to the statements of the Tennessee historians, that Sevier had no 
part in these preHminary operations. 

^ The northern portion of North Carolina was still in possession of the 
remainder of Gates's army, but they could have been brushed aside with- 
out an effort. 

* "A numerous army now appeared on the frontier drawn from Nola- 



476 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

in hot haste brought word to the king's commanders that the 
backwater men had come over the mountains. The Indian 
fighters of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the 
Western waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles, 
and were pouring down to the help of their brethren of the 
plains. 

Ferguson had pushed his victories to the foot of the Smoky 
and the Yellow mountains. Here he learned, perhaps for the 
first time, that there were a few small settlements beyond the 
high ranges he saw in his front; and he heard that some of 
these backwoods mountaineers had already borne arms against 
him and were now harboring men who had fled from before 
his advance. By a prisoner whom he had taken he at once 
sent them warning to cease their hostilities, and threatened 
that if they did not desist he would march across the moun- 
tains, hang their leaders, put their fighting men to the sword, 
and waste their settlements with fire. He had been joined by 
refugee Tories from the Watauga, who could have piloted 
him thither ; and perhaps he intended to make his threats good. 
It seems more likely that he paid little heed to the mountaineers, 
scorning their power to do him hurt; though he did not regard 
them with the haughty and ignorant disdain usually felt for 
such irregulars by the British army officers. 

When the Holston men learned that Ferguson had come 
to the other side of the mountains, and threatened their chiefs 
with the halter and their homes with the torch, a flame of 
passionate anger was kindled in all their hearts. They did 
not wait for his attack ; they sallied from their strongholds 
to meet him. Their crops were garnered, their young men 
were ready for the march; and though the Otari war bands 
lowered like thunder-clouds on their southern border, they 
determined to leave only enough men to keep the savages at 

chucky and other settlements beyond the mountains, whose very names 
had been unknown to us." Lord Rawdon's letter of October 24, 1780. 
Clarke of Georijia had plundered a convoy of presents intended for the 
Indians, at Augusta, and the British wrongly supposed this to be like- 
wise the aim of the mountaineers. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 477 

bay for the moment, and with the rest to overwhelm Ferguson 
before he could retreat out of their reach. Hitherto, the war 
with the British had been something afar off; now it had 
come to their thresholds, and their spirits rose to the danger. 

Shelby was the first to hear the news. He at once rode 
down to Sevier's home on the Nolichucky; for they were the 
two county lieutenants,^ who had control of all the militia of 
the district. At Sevier's log house there was feasting and 
merrymaking, for he had given a barbecue, and a great horse- 
race was to be run, while the backwoods champions tried their 
skill as marksmen and wrestlers. In the midst of the merry- 
making Shelby appeared, hot with hard riding, to tell of the 
British advance, and to urge that the time was ripe for fight- 
ing, not feasting, Sevier at once entered heartily into his 
friend's plan, and agreed to raise his rifle-rangers, and to 
gather the broken and disorganized refugees who had fled 
across the mountains under McDowell. While this was being 
done, Shelby returned to his home to call out his own militia 
and to summon the Holston Virginians to his aid. With the 
latter purpose he sent one of his brothers to Arthur Camp- 
bell, the county lieutenant of his neighbors across the border. 
Arthur at once proceeded to urge the adoption of the plan 
on his cousin, William Campbell, who had just returned from 
a short and successful campaign against the Tories round the 
head of the Kanawha, where he had speedily quelled an at- 
tempted uprising. 

Gates had already sent William Campbell an earnest request 
to march down with his troops and join the main army. This 
he could not do, as his militia had only been called out to put 
down their own internal foes,- and their time of service had 

* Shelby was regularly commissioned as county lieutenant. Sevier's com- 
mission was not sent him until several weeks later ; but he had long acted 
as such by the agreement of the settlers, who paid very little heed to the 
weak and disorganized North Carolina government. 

* Gates MSS. Letter of William Campbell, September 6. 1780. He evi- 
dently at the time failed to appreciate the pressing danger; but he ended 
by saying that "if the Indians were not harassing their frontier," and a 
corps of riflemen were formed, he would do all in his power to forward 
them to Gates. 



478 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

expired. But the continued advance of the British at last 
thoroughly alarmed the Virginians of the mountain region. 
They promptly set about raising a corps of riflemen/ and as 
soon as this course of action was determined on Campbell 
was foremost in embodying all the Holston men who could 
be spared, intending to march westward and join any Virginia 
army that might be raised to oppose Cornwallis. While thus 
employed he received Shelby's request, and, for answer, at 
first sent word that he could not change his plans; but on 
receiving a second and more urgent message he agreed to come 
as desired." 

The appointed meeting-place was at the Sycamore Shoals 
of the Watauga. There the riflemen gathered on the 25th of 
September, Campbell bringing four hundred men, Sevier and 
Shelby two hundred and forty each, while the refugees under 
McDowell amounted to about one hundred and sixty. With 
Shelby came his two brothers, one of whom was afterward 
slightly wounded at King's Mountain; while Sevier had in 
his regiment no less than six relations of his own name, his two 
sons being privates, and his two brothers captains. One of 
the latter was mortally wounded in the battle. 

To raise money for provisions, Sevier and Shelby were 
obliged to take, on their individual guaranties, the funds in 
the entry-taker's offices that had been received from the sale 
of lands. They amounted in all to nearly thirteen thousand 
dollars, every dollar of which they afterward refunded. 

* Gates MSS. Letter of William Preston, September 18, 1780. The corps 
v/as destined to join Gates, as Preston says ; hence Campbell's reluctance 
to go with Shelby and Sevier. There were to be from five hundred 
to one thousand men. See letter of William Davidson, September 18, 1780. 

^ Shelby's MS. Autobiography. Campbell MSS., especially MS. letters 
of Colonel Arthur Campbell of September 3, 1810, October 18, 1810, etc.; 
MS. notes on Sevier in Tennessee Historical Society. The latter consist 
of memoranda by his old soldiers, who were with him in the battle ; many 
of their statements are to be received cautiously, but there seems no rea- 
son to doubt their account of his receiving the news while giving a great 
barbecue. Shelby is certainly entitled to the credit of planning and start- 
ing the campaign against Ferguson. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 479 

On the 26th ^ they began the march, over a thousand strong, 
most of them mounted on swift, wiry horses. They were led 
by leaders they trusted, they were wonted to Indian warfare, 
they were skilled as horsemen and marksmen, they knew how 
to face every kind of danger, hardship, and privation. Their 
fringed and tasselled hunting-shirts were girded in by bead- 
worked belts, and the trappings of their horses were stained 
red and yellow. On their heads they wore caps of coonskin 
or minkskin, with the tails hanging down, or else felt hats, 
in each of which was thrust a bucktail or a sprig of evergreen. 
Every man carried a small-bore rifle, a tomahawk, and a scalp- 
ing-knife. A very few of the officers had swords, and there 
was not a bayonet nor a tent in the army.- Before leaving 
their camping-ground at the Sycamore Shoals they gathered 
in an open grove to hear a stern old Presbyterian preacher ^ 
invoke on the enterprise the blessing of Jehovah. Leaning on 
their long rifles, they stood in rings round the black-frocked 
minister, a grim and wild congregation, who listened in silence 
to his words of burning zeal as he called on them to stand 
stoutly in the battle and to smite their foes with the sword of 
the Lord and of Gideon. 

The army marched along Doe River, driving their beef -cattle 
with them, and camped that night at the "Resting-Place,'* 
under Shelving Rock, beyond Crab Orchard. Next morning 
they started late, and went up the pass between Roan and Yel- 
low mountains. The table-land on the top was deep in snow.* 
Here two Tories who were in Sevier's band deserted and fled 

^ "State of the Proceedings of the Western Army from Sept. 25, 1780, 
to the Reduction of Major Ferguson and the Army under his Command," 
signed by Campbell, Shelby, and Cleavland. The official report ; it is in the 
Gates MSS. in the New York Historical Society. It was published com- 
plete at the time, except the tabulated statement of loss, which has never 
been printed ; I give it farther on. 

^ General William Lenoir's account, prepared for Judge A. D. Murphy's 
intended history of North Carolina. Lenoir was a private in the battle. 

' Reverend Samuel Doak. Draper, 176. A tradition, but proJDably truth- 
ful, being based on the statements of Sevier and Shelby's soldiers in their 
old age. It is the kind of an incident that tradition will often faithfully 
preserve. 

" "Diary" of Ensign Robert Campbell. 



48o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

to warn Ferguson ; and the troops, on learning of the desertion, 
abandoned their purpose of following the direct route, and 
turned to the left, taking a more northerly trail. It was of 
so difficult a character that Shelby afterward described it as 
"the worst route ever followed by an army of horsemen." ^ 
That afternoon they partly descended the east side of the range, 
camping in Elk Hollow, near Roaring Run. The following 
day they went down through the ravines and across the spurs 
by a stony and precipitous path, in the midst of magnificent 
scenery, and camped at the mouth of Grassy Creek. On the 
29th they crossed the Blue Ridge at Gillespie's Gap, and saw 
afar off, in the mountain coves and rich valleys of the upper 
Catawba, the advanced settlements of the Carolina pioneers — 
for hitherto they had gone through an uninhabited waste. The 
mountaineers, fresh from their bleak and rugged hills, gazed 
with delight on the soft and fertile beauty of the landscape. 
That night they camped on the North Fork of the Catawba, 
and next day they went down the river to Quaker Meadows, 
McDowell's home. 

At this point they were joined by three hundred and fifty 
North Carolina militia from the counties of Wilkes and Surrey, 
who were creeping along through the woods, hoping to fall 
in with some party going to harass the enemy. ~ They were 
under Colonel Benjamin Cleavland, a mighty hunter and Indian 
fighter, and an adventurous wanderer in the wilderness. He 
was an uneducated backwoodsman, famous for his great size 
and his skill with the rifle, no less than for the curious mixture 
of courage, rough good humor, and brutality in his character. 
He bore a ferocious hatred to the royalists, and in the course 
of the vindictive civil war carried on between the Whigs and 
Tories in North Carolina he suffered much. In return he per- 

^ Shelby MS. 

* Shelby MS. Autobiography. See also Gates ]\ISS. Letter of William 
Davidson, September 14, 1780. Davidson had foreseen that there would 
be a fight between the Western militia and Ferguson, and he had sent 
word to his militia subordinates to join any force — as McDowell's — that 
might go against the British leader. The alarm caused by the latter had 
prevented the militia from joining Davidson himself. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 481 

secuted his public and private foes with ruthless ferocity, hang- 
ing and mutilating any Tories against whom the neighboring 
Whigs chose to bear evidence. As the fortunes of the war 
veered about he himself received many injuries. His goods 
were destroyed, and his friends and relations were killed or 
had their ears cropped off. Such deeds often repeated roused 
to a fury of revenge his fierce and passionate nature, to which 
every principle of self-control was foreign. He had no hope 
of redress, save in his own strength and courage, and on every 
favorable opportunity he hastened to take more than ample 
vengeance. Admitting all the wrongs he suffered, it still re- 
mains true that many of his acts of brutality were past excuse. 
His wife was a worthy helpmeet. Once, in his absence, a Tory 
horse thief was brought to their home and, after some discus- 
sion, the captors, Cleavland's sons, turned to their mother, who 
was placidly going on with her ordinary domestic avocations, 
to know what they should do with the prisoner. Taking from 
her mouth the corn-cob pipe she had been smoking, she coolly 
sentenced him to be hung, and hung he was without further 
delay or scruple.^ Yet Cleavland was a good friend and neigh- 
bor, devoted to his country, and also a stanch Presbyterian.- 

The Tories were already on the alert. Some of them had 
been harassing Ceavland, and they had ambushed his advance- 
guard, and shot his brother, crippling him for life. But they 
did not dare try to arrest the progress of so formidable a body 
of men as had been gathered together at Quaker Meadows; 
and contented themselves with sending repeated warnings to 
Ferguson. 

On October ist the combined forces marched past Pilot 
Mountain, and camped near the heads of Cane and Silver 
creeks. Hitherto each colonel had commanded his own men, 
there being no general head, and every morning and evening 
the colonels had met in concert to decide the day's movements. 
The whole expedition was one of volunteers, the agreement 

* Draper, 448. * Allaire's "Diary," entry for October 29, 1780. 



482 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

between the officers and the obedience rendered them by the 
soldiers simply depending on their own free will : there was no 
legal authority on which to go, for the commanders had called 
out the militia without any instructions from the executives 
of their several States.^ Disorders had naturally broken out. 
The men of the different companies felt some rivalry toward 
one another; and those of bad character, sure to be found in 
any such gathering, could not be properly controlled. Some 
of Cleavland's and McDowell's people were very unruly; 
and a few of the Watauga troops also behaved badly, plunder- 
ing both Whigs and Tories,^ and even starting to drive the 
stolen stock back across the mountains. 

At so important a crisis the good sense and sincere patriot- 
ism of the men in command made them sink all personal and 
local rivalries. On the 26. of October they all gathered, to see 
what could be done to stop the disorders and give the army 
a single head; for it was thought that In a day or two they 
would close in with Ferguson. They were in Colonel Charles 
McDowell's district, and he was the senior officer; but the 
others distrusted his activity and judgment, and were not will- 
ing that he should command. To solve the difficulty, Shelby 
proposed that supreme command should be given to Colonel 
Campbell, who had brought the largest body of men with 
him, and who was a Virginian, whereas the other four col- 
onels were North Carolinians.^ Meanwhile, McDowell should 
go to Gates's army to get a general to command them, leaving 
his men under the charge of his brother Joseph, who was 
a major. This proposition was at once agreed to; and its 
adoption did much to insure the subsequent success. Shelby 

^ Gates MSS. Letter of Campbell, Shelby, Cleavland, etc., October 4, 
1780. 

^Deposition of Colonel Matthew Willoughby (who was in the fight), 
April 30, 1823, Richmond Enquirer, May 9, 1823. 

^ Though by birth three were Virginians, and one, Shelby, a Marylander. 
All were Presbyterians. McDowell, like Campbell, was of Irish descent, 
Cleavland of English, Shelby of Welsh, and Sevier of French Huguenot. 
The families of the first two had originally settled in Pennsylvania. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 483 

not only acted wisely, but magnanimously; for he was him- 
self of superior rank to Campbell, and moreover was a proud, 
ambitious man, desirous of military glory. 

The army had been joined by two or three squads of par- 
tisans, including some refugee Georgians. They were about 
to receive a larger reinforcement; for at this time several 
small guerilla bands of North and South Carolina Whigs were 
encamped at Flint Hill, some distance west of the encamp- 
ment of the mountain-men. These Flint Hill bands numbered 
about four hundred men, all told, under the leadership of various 
militia colonels — Hill, Lacey, Williams, Graham, and Ham- 
bright.^ Hill and Lacey were two of Sumter's lieutenants, and 
had under them some of his men; Williams," who was also 
a South Carolinian, claimed command of them because he had 
just been commissioned a brigadier-general of militia. His 
own force was very small, and he did not wish to attack Fer- 
guson, but to march southward to Ninety-Six. Sumter's men, 
who were more numerous, were eager to join the mountaineers, 
and entirely refused to submit to Williams. A hot quarrel, 
almost resulting in a fight, ensued. Hill and Lacey accusing 
Williams of being bent merely on plundering the wealthy 
Tories and of desiring to avoid a battle with the British. Their 
imputation on his courage was certainly unjust ; but they were 
probably c[uite right when they accused him of a desire to rob 
and plunder the Tories. A succession of such quarrels speedily 
turned this assemblage of militia into an armed and warlike 
rabble. Fortunately, Hill and Lacey prevailed, word was sent 

^ Hambright was a Pennsylvania German, the father of eighteen chil- 
dren. Hill, who was suffering from a severe wound, was unfit to take an 
active part in the King's Mountain fight. His MS. narrative of the cam- 
paign is largely quoted by Draper. 

' Bancroft gives Williams an altogether undeserved prominence. As he 
had a commission as brigadier-general, some of the British thought he was 
in supreme command at King's 'Mountain; in a recent magazine article, 
General De Peyster again sets forth his claims. In reality he only had 
a small subordinate or independent command, and had no share what- 
ever in conducting the campaign, and very little in the actual battle, 
though he behaved with much courage and was killed. 



484 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

to the mountaineers, and the FHnt Hill bands marched in loose 
order to join them at Cowpens.^ 

The mountain army had again begun its march on the after- 
noon of the third day of the month. Before starting, the 
colonels summoned their men, told them the nature and danger 
of the service, and asked such as were unwilling to go farther 
to step to the rear ; but not a man did so. Then Shelby made 
them a short speech, well adapted to such a levy. He told them 
when they encountered the enemy not to wait for the word 
of command, but each to "be his own officer," and do all he 
could, sheltering himself as far as possible, and not to throw 
away a chance; if they came on the British in the woods they 
were "to give them Indian play," and advance from tree to tree, 
pressing the enemy unceasingly. He ended by promising them 
that their officers would shrink from no danger, but would 
lead them everywhere, and, in their turn, they must be on the 
alert and obey orders. 

When they set out their uncertainty as to Ferguson's move- 
ments caused them to go slowly, their scouts sometimes skirm- 
ishing with lurking Tories. They reached the mouth of Cane 
Creek, near Gilbert Town, on October 4th. With the par- 
tisans that had joined them they then numbered fifteen hun- 
dred men. McDowell left them at this point to go to Gates 
with the request for the appointment of a general to command 
then.^ For some days the men had been living on the ears of 

* Gates MSS. Letter of General William Davidson, October 3, 1780. 
Also Hill's "Narrative." 

'Gates MSS. (in New York Historical Society). It is possible that 
Campbell was not chosen chief commander until this time ; Ensign Robert 
Campbell's account (MSS. in Tennessee Historical Society) explicitly 
states this to be the case. The Shelby MS. and the official report make 
the date the ist or 2d. One letter in the Gates MSS. has apparently 
escaped all notice from historians and investigators ; it is the document 
which McDowell bore with him to Gates. It is dated "October 4th, 1780, 
near Gilbert town," and is signed by Cleavland, Shelby, Sevier, Campbell, 
Andrew Hampton, and J. Winston. It begins: "We have collected at this 
place 1,500 good men drawn from the counties of Surrey, Wilkes, Burk, 
Washington, and Sullivan counties [sic] in this State and Washington 
County in Virginia." It says that they expect to be joined in a few days 
by Clarke of Georgia and Williams of South Carolina with one thousand 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 485 

green corn which they plucked from the fields, but at this 
camping-place they slaughtered some beeves and made a feast. 

The mountaineers had hoped to catch Ferguson at Gilbert 
Town, but they found that he had fled toward the northeast, 
so they followed after him. Many of their horses were crippled 
and exhausted, and many of the footmen footsore and weary; 
and the next day they were able to go but a dozen miles to 
the ford of Green River. 

That evening Campbell and his fellow officers held a council 
to decide what course was best to follow. Lacey, riding over 
from the militia companies who were marching; from Flint 
Hill, had just reached their camp ; he told them the direction in 
which Ferguson had fled, and at the same time appointed the 
Cowpens as the meeting-place for their respective forces. 
Their whole army was so jaded that the leaders knew they 
could not possibly urge it on fast enough to overtake Fergu- 
son, and the flight of the latter made them feel all the more 
confident that they could beat him, and extremely reluctant 
that he should get away. In consequence, they determined to 
take seven or eight hundred of the least-tired, best-armed, and 
best-mounted men, and push rapidly after their foe, picking 
up on the way any militia they met, and leaving the other half 
of their army to follow as fast as it could. 

At daybreak on the morning of the 6th the picked men set 

men (in reality, Clarke, who had nearly six hundred troops, never met 
them) ; asks for a general ; says they have great need of ammunition, and 
remarks on the fact of their "troops being all militia, and but little ac- 
quainted with discipline." It was this document that gave the first im- 
pression to contemporaries that the battle was fought by 1,500 Americans. 
Thus General Davidson's letter of October loth to Gates, giving him the 
news of the victory, has served as a basis for most subsequent writers 
about the numbers. He got his particulars from one of Sumter's men, 
who was in the fight ; but he evidently mixed them up in his mind, for 
he speaks of Williams, Lacey, and their companions as joining the others 
at Gilbert Town, instead of the Cowpens; makes the total number 3,000, 
whereas, by the official report of October 4th, Campbell's party only num- 
bered 1,500, and Williams, Lacey, etc., had but 400, or 1,900 in all; says 
that 1,600 good horses were chosen out, evidently confusing this with the 
number at Gilbert Town; credits Ferguson with 1,400 men, and puts the 
American loss at only 20 killed. 



486 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

out, about seven hundred and fifty in number.^ In the after- 
noon they passed by several large bands of Tories, who had 
assembled to join Ferguson; but the Holston men were reso- 
lute in their determination to strike at the latter, and would 
no be diverted from it, nor waste time by following their lesser 
enemies. 

Riding all day they reached the Cowpens when the sun had 
already set, a few minutes after the arrival of the Flint Hill 
militia under Lacey, Hill, and Williams. The tired troops 
were speedily engaged in skinning beeves for their supper, 
roasting them by the blazing camp-fires; and fifty acres of 
corn, belonging to the rich Tory who owned the Cowpens, 
materially helped the meal. Meanwhile a council was held, 
in which all the leading officers, save Williams, took part. 
Campbell was confirmed as commander-in-chief, and it was 
decided to once more choose the freshest soldiers, and fall on 
Ferguson before he could either retreat or be reinforced. The 
officers went round, picking out the best men, the best rifles, 
and the best horses. Shortly after nine o'clock the choice had 
been made, and nine hundred and ten - picked riflemen, well 
mounted, rode out of the circle of flickering firelight, and 

*MS. "Narrative" of Ensign Robert Campbell (see also Draper, 221) 
says seven hundred ; and about fifty of the footmen who were in good 
training followed so quickly after them that they were able to take part 
in the battle. Lenoir says the number was only five or six hundred. The 
modern accounts generally fail to notice this Green River weeding out of 
the weak men, or confuse it with what took place at the Cowpens ; hence 
many of them greatly exaggerate the number of Americans who fought 
in the battle. 

'The official report says 900; Shelby, in all his earlier narratives, 910; 
Hill, 933. The last authority is important because he was one of the 400 
men who joined the mountaineers at the Cowpens, and his testimony con- 
firms the explicit declaration of the official report that the 900 men who 
fought in the battle were chosen after the junction with Williams, Lacey, 
and Hill. A few late narratives, including that of Shelby in his old age, 
make the choice take place before the junction, and the total number then 
amount to 1,300; evidently the choice at the Cowpens is by these authors 
confused with the choice at Green River. Shelby's memory when he was 
old was certainly very treacherous ; in similar fashion he, as has been 
seen, exaggerated greatly his numbers at the Enoree. On the other hand, 
Robert Campbell puts the number at only 700, and Lenoir between 600 
and 700. Both of these thus err in the opposite direction. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 487 

began their night journey. A few determined footmen fol- 
lowed, going almost as fast as the horse, and actually reached 
the battle-field in season to do their share of the fighting. 

All this time Ferguson had not been idle. He first heard 
of the advance of the backwoodsmen on September 30th from 
the two Tories who deserted Sevier on Yellow Mountain. 
He had furloughed many of his Loyalists, as all formidable 
resistance seemed at an end ; and he now sent out messengers 
in every direction to recall them to his standard. Meanwhile, 
he fell slowly back from the foot-hills, so that he might not 
have to face the mountaineers until he had time to gather his 
own troops. He instantly wrote for reinforcements to Cruger, 
at Ninety-Six. Cruger had just returned from routing the 
Georgian Colonel Clarke, who was besieging Augusta. In 
the chase a number of Americans were captured, and thirteen 
were hung. The British and Tories interpreted the already 
sufficiently severe instructions of their commander-in-chief 
with the utmost liberality, even the officers chronicling the 
hanging with exultant pleasure, as pointing out the true way 
by which to end the war.-^ 

Cruger, in his answer to Ferguson, explained that he did 
not have the number of militia regiments with which he was 
credited; and he did not seem to quite take in the gravity of 
the situation,^ expressing his pleasure at hearing how strongly 
the Loyalists of North Carolina had rallied to Ferguson's sup- 
port, and speaking of the hope he had felt that the North Caro- 
lina Tories would by themselves have proved "equal to the 
mountain lads." However, he promptly set about forwarding 
the reinforcements that were demanded; but before they could 
reach the scene of action the fate of the campaign had been 
decided. 

Ferguson had not waited for outside help. He threw him- 
self into the work of rallying the people of the plains, who 

* Draper, p. 201, quotes a printed letter from a British officer to this 
effect. 

* Probably Ferguson himself failed to do so at this time. 



488 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

were largely Loyalists/ against the over-mountain men, ap- 
pealing not only to their royalist sentiments, but to their strong 
local prejudices, and to the dread many of them felt for the 
wild border fighters. On the ist of October he sent out a 
proclamation, of which copies were scattered broadcast among 
the Loyalists. It was instinct with the fiery energy of the 
writer, and well suited to goad into action the rough Tories 
and the doubtful men to whom it was addressed. He told 
them that the backwater men had crossed the mountains, with 
chieftains at their head who would surely grant mercy to none 
who had been loyal to the king. He called on them to grasp 
their arms on the moment and run to his standard, if they 
desired to live and bear the name of men; to rally without 
delay, unless they wished to be eaten up by the incoming horde 
of cruel barbarians, to be themselves robbed and murdered, 
and to see their daughters and wives abused by the dregs of 
mankind. In ending, he told them scornfully that if they 
chose to be spat - upon and degraded forever by a set of mon- 
grels, to say so at once, that their women might turn their backs 
on them and look out for real men to protect them. 

Hoping to be joined by Cruger's regiments, as well as by 
his own furloughed men and the neighboring Tories, he grad- 
ually drew off from the mountains, doubling and turning, so 
as to hide his route and puzzle his pursuers. Exaggerated 
reports of the increase in the number of his foes were brought 
to him, and, as he saw how slowly they marched, he sent re- 
peated messages to Cornwallis, asking for reinforcements; 
promising speedily to "finish the business," if three or four 
hundred soldiers, part dragoons, were given him, for the 
Americans were certainly making their "last push in this 
quarter." ^ He was not willing to leave the many loyal in- 
habitants of the district to the vengeance of the Whigs ; ^ and 

* Gates MSS. Letter of Davidson, September 14th, speaks of the large 
number of Tories in the counties where Ferguson was operating. 

'The word actually used was still stronger. 

* See letter quoted by Tarleton. * Ferguson's "Memoir," p. 32. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 489 

his hopes of reinforcements were well founded. Every day 
furloughed men rejoined him, and bands of Loyalists came 
into camp ; and he was in momentary expectation of help from 
Cornwallis or Cruger. It will be remembered that the moun- 
taineers on their last march passed several Tory bands. One 
of these alone, near the Cowpens, was said to have contained 
six hundred men; and in a day or two they would all have 
joined Ferguson. If the Whigs had come on in a body, 
as there was every reason to expect, Ferguson would have 
been given the one thing he needed — time; and he would 
certainly have been too strong for his opponents. His de- 
feat was due to the sudden push of the mountain chieftains; 
to their long, swift ride from the ford of Green River, at 
the head of their picked horse-riflemen. 

The British were still in the dark as to the exact neigh- 
borhood from which their foes — the "swarm of backwoods- 
men," as Tarleton called them^ — really came. It was gen- 
erally supposed that they were in part from Kentucky, and 
that Boone himself was among the number.- However, Fer- 
guson probably cared very little who they were; and keep- 
ing, as he supposed, a safe distance away from them, he 
halted at King's Mountain in South Carolina on the evening 
of October 6th, pitching his camp on a steep, narrow hill 
just south of the North Carolina boundary. The King's 
Mountain range itself is about sixteen miles in length, ex- 
tending in a southwesterly course from one State into the 
other. The stony, half-isolated ridge on which Ferguson 

^ Tarleton's "Campaigns," p. 169. 

'British historians to the present day repeat this. Even Lecky, in his 
"History of England," speaks of the backwoodsmen as in part from Ken- 
tucky. Having pointed out this trivial fault in Lecky's vi^ork, it would be 
ungracious not to allude to the general justice and impartiality of its 
accounts of these Revolutionary campaigns; they are very much rnore 
trustworthy than Bancroft's, for instance. Lecky scarcely gives the right 
color to the struggle in the South ; but when Bancroft treats of it, it is 
not too much to say that he puts the contest between the Whigs and the 
British and Tories in a decidedly false light. Lecky fails to do justice 
to Washington's military ability, however; and overrates the French 
assistance. 



490 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

camped was some six or seven hundred yards long and half 
as broad from base to base, or two-thirds that distance on 
top. The steep sides were clad with a growth of open 
woods, including both saplings and big timber. Ferguson 
parked his baggage-wagons along the northeastern part of 
the mountain. The next day he did not move ; he was as near 
to the army of Cornwallis at Charlotte as to the mountaineers, 
and he thought it safe to remain where he was. He deemed 
the position one of great strength — as indeed it would have 
been, if assailed in the ordinary European fashion — and he 
was confident that even if the rebels attacked him he could 
readily beat them back. But, as General Lee, "Light-Horse 
Harry," afterward remarked, the hill was much easier as- 
saulted with the rifle than defended with the bayonet. 

The backwoodsmen, on leaving the camp at the Cowpens, 
marched slowly through the night, which was dark and driz- 
zly; many of the men got scattered in the woods, but joined 
their commands in the morning — the morning of October 7th. 
The troops bore down to the southward, a little out of the 
straight route, to avoid any patrol-parties; and at sunrise 
they splashed across the Cherokee ford.^ Throughout the 
forenoon the rain continued, but the troops pushed steadily 
onward without halting,^ wrapping their blankets and the 
skirts of their hunting-shirts round their gun-locks, to keep 
them dry. Some horses gave out, but their riders, like the 
thirty or forty footmen who had followed from the Cow- 
pens, struggled onward and were in time for the battle. When 
near King's Mountain they captured two Tories, and from 
them learned Ferguson's exact position ; that "he was on a 
ridge between two branches," ^ where some deer-hunters had 

^"American Pioneer," II, 67. An account of one of the soldiers, Ben- 
jamin Sharp, written in his old age; full of contradictions of every kind 
(he, for instance, forgets they joined Williams at the Cowpens) ; it can- 
not be taken as an authority, but supplies some interesting details. 

^Late in life Shelby asserted that this steadiness in pushing on was due 
to his own influence. The other accounts do not bear him out. 

* /. e., brooks. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 491 

camped the previous fall. These deer-hunters were now with 
the oncoming backwoodsmen, and declared that they knew 
the ground well. Without halting, Campbell and the other 
colonels rode forward together, and agreed to surround the 
hill so that their men might fire upward without risk of 
hurting one another. It was a bold plan; for they knew 
their foes probably outnumbered them; but they were very 
confident of their own prowess and were anxious to strike 
a crippling blow. From one or two other captured Tories, 
and from a stanch Whig friend, they learned the exact dis- 
position of the British and Loyalist force, and were told that 
their noted leader wore a light parti-colored hunting-shirt; 
and he was forthwith doomed to be a special target for the 
backwoods rifles. When within a mile of the hill a halt 
was called, and after a hasty council of the different colonels — 
in which Williams did not take part — the final arrangements 
were made, and the men, who had been marching in loose 
order, were formed in line of battle. They then rode forward 
in absolute silence and, when close to the west slope of the 
battle-hill, beyond King's Creek, drew rein and dismounted. 
They tied their horses to trees, and fastened their greatcoats 
and blankets to the saddles, for the rain had cleared away. 
A few of the officers remained mounted. The countersign 
of the day was "Buford," the name of the colonel whose 
troops Tarleton had defeated and butchered. The final order 
was for each man to look carefully at the priming of his 
rifle, and then to go into battle and fight till he died. 

The foes were now face to face. On the one side were 
the American backwoodsmen, under their own leaders, armed 
in their own manner, and fighting after their own fashion, 
for the freedom and the future of America; on the oppo- 
site side were other Americans — the Loyalists, led by British 
officers, armed and trained in the British fashion, and fight- 
ing on behalf of the empire of Britain and the majesty of 
the monarchy. The Americans numbered, all told, about nine 



492 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

hundred and fifty men.^ The British forces were composed, 
in bulk, of the CaroHna Loyalists — troops similar to the 
Americans who joined the mountaineers at Quaker Meadows 
and the Cowpens;^ the difference being that besides these 
lowland militia, there were arrayed on one side the men 
from the Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky, and on the other 
the Loyalist regulars, Ferguson had, all told, between nine 
hundred and a thousand troops, a hundred and twenty or 
thirty o£ them being the regulars or "American Volunteers," 
the remainder Tory militia.^ The forces were very nearly 

^ Nine hundred and ten horsemen (possibly 900, or perhaps 933) started 
out ; and the footmen who kept up were certainly less than 50 in number. 
There is really no question as to the American numbers ; yet a variety 
of reasons have conspired to cause them to be generally greatly overstated, 
even by American historians. Even Phelan gives them 1,500 men, follow- 
ing the ordinary accounts. At the time, many outsiders supposed that all 
the militia who were at the Cowpens fought in the battle ; but this is not 
asserted by any one who knew the facts. General J. Watts De Peyster, 
in the Magazine of American History for 1880 — "The Affair at King's 
'Mountain" — gives the extreme Tory view. He puts the number of the 
Americans at from 1,300 to 1,900. His account, however, is only based 
on Shelby's later narratives, told thirty years after the event, and these are 
all that need be considered. When Shelby grew old he greatly exaggerated 
the numbers on both sides in all the fights in which he had taken part. 
In his account of King's Mountain, he speaks of Williams and the 400 
Flint Hill men joining the attacking body after, not before, the 910 picked 
men started. But his earlier accounts, including the official report which 
he signed, explicitly contradict this. The question is thus purely as to the 
time of the junction: as to whether it was after or before this that the 
body of 900 actual fighters was picked out. Shelby's later report contains 
the grossest self-contradictions. Thus it enumerates the companies which 
fought the battle in detail, the result running up several hundred more 
than the total he gives. The early and official accounts are in every way 
more worthy of credence; but the point is settled beyond dispute by Hill's 
"Narrative." Hill was one of the 400 men with Williams, and he ex- 
pressly states that after the junction at the Cowpens the force, from both 
commands, that started out numbered 933. The question is thus definitely 
settled. Most of the later accounts simply follow the statements Shelby 
made in his old age. 

''There were many instances of brothers and cousins in the opposing 
ranks at King's Mountain; a proof of the similarity in the character of 
the forces. 

^ The American official account says that they captured the British 
provision returns, according to which their force amounted to 1,125 men. 
It further reports, of the regulars, 19 killed, 35 wounded and left on the 
ground as unable to march, and 78 captured ; of the Tories, 206 killed, 
128 wounded and left on the ground, unable to march, and 648 captured. 
The number of Tories killed must be greatly exaggerated. Allaire, in his 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 493 

equal in number. What difference there was, was probably 
in favor of the British and Tories. There was not a bay- 
onet in the American army, whereas Ferguson trusted much 
to this weapon. All his volunteers and regulars were expert in 
its use, and with his usual ingenuity he had trained several 
of his Loyalist companies in a similar manner, improvising 
bayonets out of their hunting-knives. The Loyalists whom 
he had had with him for some time were well drilled. The 
North Carolina regiment was weaker on this point, as it was 
composed of recruits who had joined him but recently.^ 

"Diary," says Ferguson had only 800 men, but almost in the same sentence 
enumerates 906, giving of the regulars 19 killed, 33 wounded, and 64 
captured (116 in all, instead of 132, as in the American account), and of 
the Tories 100 killed, 90 wounded, and "about" 600 captured. This does 
not take account of those who escaped. From Ramsey and De Peyster 
down most writers assert that every single individual on the defeated side 
was killed or taken; but in Colonel Chesney's admirable "Military 
Biography" there is given the autobiography or memoir of a South Caro- 
lina Loyalist who was in the battle. His account of the battle is meagre 
and unimportant, but he expressly states that at the close he and a number 
of others escaped through the American lines by putting sprigs of white 
paper in their caps, as some of the Whig militia did — for the militia had 
no uniforms, and were dressed alike on both sides. A certain number of 
men who escaped must thus be added. 

^ There were undoubtedly very many horse thieves, murderers, and 
rogues of every kind with Ferguson, but equally undoubtedly the bulk 
of his troops were Loyalists from principle and men of good standing, 
especially those from the seaboard. Many of the worst Tory bandits 
did not rally to him, preferring to plunder on their own account. The 
American army itself was by no means free from scoundrels. Most 
American writers belittle the character of Ferguson's force and sneer 
at the courage of the Tories, although entirely unable to adduce any proof 
of their statements, the evidence being the other way. Apparently they 
are unconscious of the fact that they thus wofully diminish the credit to 
be given to the victors. It may be questioned if there ever was a braver 
or finer body of riflemen than the nine hundred who surrounded and 
killed or captured a superior body of well-posted, well-led, and courageous 
men, in part also well-drilled, on King's Mountain. The whole world 
now recognizes how completely the patriots were in the right ; but it is 
especially incumbent on American historians to fairly portray the acts and 
character of the Tories, doing justice to them as well as to the Whigs, 
and condemning them only when they deserve it. In studying the Revolu- 
tionary War in the Southern States, I have been struck ])y the way in 
which the American historians alter the facts by relying purely on partisan 
accounts, suppressing the innumerable Whig excesses and outrages, or 
else palliating them. They thus really destroy the force of the many grave 
accusations which may be truthfully brought against the British and 
Tories. I regret to say that Bancroft is among the offenders. Hildreth 



494 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The Americans were discovered by their foes when only 
a quarter of a mile away. They had formed their forces 
as they marched. The right centre was composed of Camp- 
bell's troops; the left centre of Shelby's. These two bodies 
separated slightly so as to come up opposite sides of the nar- 
row southwestern spur of the mountain. The right wing was 
led by Sevier, with his own and McDowell's troops. On the 
extreme right Major Winston, splitting off from the main 
body a few minutes before, had led a portion of Cleavland's 
men by a round-about route to take the mountain in the rear, 
and cut off all retreat. He and his followers "rode like fox- 
hunters," as was afterward reported by one of their number 
who was accustomed to following the buck and the gray 
fox with horn and hound. They did not dismount until they 
reached the foot of the mountain, galloping at full speed 
through the rock-strewn woods; and they struck exactly the 
right place, closing up the only gap by which the enemy could 
have retreated. The left wing was led by Cleavland. It con- 
tained not only the bulk of his own Wilkes and Surrey men, 
but also the North and South Carolinians who had joined 
the army at the Cowpens under the command of Williams, 
Lacey, Hambright, Chronicle, and others.'^ The different 
leaders cheered on their troops by a few last words as they 
went into the fight; being especially careful to warn them 
how to deal with the British bayonet charges. Campbell had 

is an honorable exception. Most of the British historians of the same 
events are even more rancorous and less trustworthy than the American 
writers ; and while fully admitting the many indefensible outrages com- 
mitted by the Whigs, a long-continued and impartial examination of 
accessible records has given me the belief that in the districts where the 
Civil War was most ferocious, much the largest numljer of the criminal 
class joined the Tories, and the misdeeds of the latter were more numerous 
than those of the Whigs. But the frequency with which both Whigs and 
Tories hung men for changing sides, shows that quite a number of the 
people shifted from one party to the other; and so there must have been 
many men of exactly the same stamp in both armies. 'Much of the 
nominal changing of sides, however, was due to the needless and excessive 
severity of Cornwallis and his lieutenants. 

^ Draper gives a good plan of the battle. He also gives some pictures of 
the fighting, in which the backwoodsmen are depicted in full Continental 
uniform, which probably not a man — especially very few of them — wore. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 495 

visited each separate band, again requesting every man who 
felt Hke flinching not to go into the battle. He bade them 
hold on to every inch of ground as long as possible, and 
when forced back to rally and return at once to the fig'ht. 
Cleavland gave much the same advice; telling his men that 
when once engaged they were not to wait for the word of com- 
mand, but to do as he did, for he would show them by his 
example how to fight, and they must then act as their own 
officers. The men were to fire quickly, and stand their ground 
as long as possible, if necessary sheltering themselves behind 
trees. If they could do no better they were to retreat, but 
not to run quite off; but to return and renew the struggle, 
for they might have better luck at the next attempt.^ 

So rapid were the movements of the Americans, and so 
unexpected the attack, that a Loyalist officer, who had been 
out reconnoitring, had just brought word to the British com- 
mander that there was no sign of danger, when the first shots 
were heard; and by the time the officer had paraded and 
posted his men, the assault had begun, his horse had been 
killed, and he himself wounded.- 

When Ferguson learned that his foes were on him, he 
sprang on his horse, his drums beat to arms, and he instantly 
made ready for the fight. Though surprised by the unex- 
pected approach of the Americans, he exerted himself with 
such energy that his troops were in battle array when the 
attack began. The outcrops of slaty rock on the hillsides 

* Ramsey ("Revolution in South Carolina"), writing in 1785, gives the 
speech verbatim, apparently from Cleavland himself. It is very irnprobable 
that it is verbally correct, but doubtless it represents the spirit of his 
remarks. 

^ "Essays in Military Biography," Colonel Charles Cornwallis Chesney, 
London, 1874. On p. 323 begins a memoir of "A Carolina Loyalist in the 
Revolutionary War." It is written by the Loyalist himself, who was 
presumably a relation of Colonel Chesney's. It was evidently written after 
the event, and there are some lapses. Thus he makes the war with the 
Cherokees take place in 1777, instead of '76. His explanation of Tarleton's 
defeat at the Cowpens must be accepted with much reserve. At King's 
Mountain he says the Americans had fifteen hundred men, instead of 
twenty-five hundred, of which Allaire speaks. Allaire probably consciously 
exaggerated the number. 



496 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

made ledges which, together with the boulders strewn on 
top, served as breastworks for the less-disciplined Tories; 
while he in person led his regulars and such of the Loyalist 
companies as were furnished with the hunting-knife bayonets. 
He hoped to be able to repulse his enemies by himself taking 
the offensive, with a succession of bayonet charges — a form 
of attack in which his experience with Pulaski and Huger had 
given him great confidence. 

At three o'clock in the afternoon the firing began, as the 
Americans drove in the British pickets. The brunt of the 
battle fell on the American centre, composed of Campbell's 
and Shelby's men, who sustained the whole fight for nearly 
ten minutes^ until the two wings had time to get into place 
and surround the enemy. Campbell began the assault, riding 
on horseback along the line of his riflemen. He ordered them 
to raise the Indian war-whoop, which they did with a will, 
and made the woods ring.- They then rushed upward and 
began to fire, each on his own account; while their war-cries 
echoed along the hillside. Ferguson's men on the summit 
responded with heavy volley-firing, and then charged, cheer- 
ing lustily. The mountain was covered with smoke and flame, 
and seemed to thunder.^ Ferguson's troops advanced stead- 
ily, their officers riding at their head, with their swords 
flashing; and the mountaineers, who had no bayonets, could 
not withstand the shock. They fled down the hillside, and 
being sinewy, nimble men, swift of foot, they were not over- 
taken, save a few of sullen temper, who would not retreat 
and were bayoneted. One of their officers, a tall backwoods- 

^ Campbell MSS. Letter of Colonel William Campbell, October lo, 1780, 
says ten minutes; the official report (Gates MSS.) says five minutes. 

'Richmond Enquirer (November 12, 1822, and May 9, 1823), certificates 
of King's Mountain survivors — of James Crow, May 6, 1813; David 
Beattie, May 4, 1813, etc. All the different commanders in after-life 
claimed the honor of beginning the battle ; the official report decides it in 
favor of Campbell and Shelby, the former being the first actually engaged, 
as is acknowledged by Shelby in his letter to Arthur Campbell on 
October 12, 1780. 

' Haywood, 71 ; doubtless he uses the language of one of the actors. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN • 497 

man, six feet in height, was cut down by Lieutenant Allaire, 
a New York Loyahst, as the latter rode at the head of his 
platoon. No sooner had the British charge spent itself than 
Campbell, who was riding midway between the enemy and 
his own men, called out to the latter in a voice of thunder 
to rally and return to the fight, and in a minute or two they 
were all climbing the hill again, going from tree to tree, 
and shooting at the soldiers on the summit. Campbell's horse, 
exhausted by the breakneck galloping hither and thither over 
the slope, gave out; he then led the men on foot, his voice 
hoarse with shouting, his face blackened with powder; for 
he was always in the front of the battle and nearest the enemy. 
No sooner had Ferguson returned from his charge on 
Campbell than he found Shelby's men swarming up to attack 
on the other side, Shelby himself was at their head. He had 
refused to let his people return the dropping fire of the Tory 
skirmishers until they were close up. Ferguson promptly 
charged his new foes and drove them down the hillside ; but 
the instant he stopped, Shelby, who had been in the thick of 
the fight, closest to the British, brought his marksmen back, 
and they came up nearer than ever, and with a deadlier fire.^ 
While Ferguson's bayonet-men — both regulars and militia — 
charged to and fro, the rest of the Loyalists kept up a heavy 
fire from behind the rocks on the hilltop. The battle raged 
in every part, for the Americans had by this time surrounded 
their foes, and they advanced rapidly under cover of the 
woods. They inflicted much more damage than they suffered, 
for they were scattered out while the royalist troops were 
close together, and, moreover, were continually taken in flank. 
Ferguson, conspicuous from his hunting-shirt,- rode hither 
and thither with reckless bravery, his sword in his left hand 
— for he had never entirely regained the use of his wounded 

' Shelby, MS. 

^The South Carolina Loyalist speaks as if the hunting-shirt were put 
on for disguise; it says Ferguson was recognized, "although wearing a 
hunting-shirt." 



498 • THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

right — while he made his presence known by the shrill, ear- 
piercing notes of a silver whistle which he always carried. 
Whenever the British and Tories charged with the bayonet, 
under Ferguson, De Peyster, or some of their lieutenants, 
the mountaineers were forced back down the hill; but the 
instant the red lines halted and returned to the summit, the 
stubborn riflemen followed close behind, and from every 
tree and boulder continued their irregular and destructive 
fire, The peculiar feature of the battle was the success with 
which, after every retreat, Campbell, Shelby, Sevier, and 
Cleavland rallied their followers on the instant; the great 
point was to prevent the men from becoming panic-stricken 
when forced to flee. The pealing volleys of musketry at short 
intervals drowned the incessant clatter of the less noisy but 
more deadly backwoods rifles. The wild whoops of the 
mountain-men, the cheering of the Loyalists, the shouts of 
the officers, and the cries of the wounded mingled with the 
reports of the firearms, and shrill above the din rose the call- 
ing of the silver whistle. Wherever its notes were heard the 
wavering British line came on, and the Americans were forced 
back. Ferguson dashed from point to point, to repel the 
attacks of his foes, which were made with ever-increasing 
fury. Two horses were killed under him;^ but he continued 
to lead the charging-parties, slashing and hewing with his 
sword until it was broken off at the hilt. At last, as he 
rode full speed against a part of Sevier's men, who had 
almost gained the hill crest, he became a fair mark for the 
vengeful backwoods riflemen. Several of them fired to- 
gether and he fell suddenly from his horse, pierced by half a 
dozen bullets almost at the same instant. The gallant British 
leader was dead, while his foot yet hung in the stirrup.^ 

* Ferguson's "Memoir," p. 32. 

^The South Carolina Loyalist sa3's he was killed just as he had slain 
Colonel Williams "with his left hand." Ramsey, on the other side, repre- 
sents Colonel Williams as being shot while dashing forward to kill 
Ferguson. Williams certainly was not killed by Ferguson himself, and in 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 499 

The silver whistle was now silent, but the disheartened 
Loyalists were rallied by De Peyster, who bravely continued 
the fight. '^ It is said that he himself led one of the charges 
which were at this time made on Cleavland's line ; the "South 
Fork" men from the Catawba, under Hambright and Chron- 
icle, being forced back, Chronicle being killed and Hambright 
wounded. When the Americans fled, they were scarcely a 
gun's length ahead of their foes; and the instant the latter 
faced about the former were rallied by their officers, and again 
went up the hill. One of the backwoodsmen was in the act 
of cocking his rifle when a Loyalist, dashing at him with 
the bayonet, pinned his hand to his thigh; the rifle went off, 
the ball going through the Loyalist's body, and the two men 
fell together. Hambright, though wounded, was able to sit 
in the saddle, and continued in the battle. Cleavland had 
his horse shot under him, and then led his men on foot. As 
the lines came close together, many of the Whigs recog- 
nized in the Tory ranks their former neighbors, friends, or 
relatives ; and the men taunted and jeered one another with 
bitter hatred. In more than one instance brother was slain 
by brother or cousin by cousin. The lowland Tories felt an 
especial dread of the mountaineers; looking with awe and 
hatred on their tall, gaunt, rawboned figures, their long, 
matted hair and wild faces. One wounded Tory, as he lay 
watching them, noticed their deadly accuracy of aim, and saw 
also that the Loyalists, firing from the summit, continually 
overshot their foes. 

all probability the latter was slain earlier in the action and in an entirely 
different part of the line. The Loyalist is also in error as to Cleavland's 
regiment being the first that was charged. There is no ground whatever 
for the statement that Ferguson was trying to escape when shot ; nor was 
there any attempt at a charge of horsemen, made in due form. The 
battle was purely one of footmen and the attempt to show an effort at a 
cavalry charge at the end is a simple absurdity. 

* In his Historical Magazine article, General Watts De Peyster clears 
his namesake's reputation from all charge of cowardice; but his account 
of how De Peyster counselled and planned all sorts of expedients that 
might have saved the Loyalists is decidedly mythical. 



500 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The British regulars had lost half their number; the re- 
mainder had been scattered and exhausted in their successive 
charges. The bayonet companies of the Loyalist militia were 
in the same plight; and the North Carolina Tories, the least 
disciplined, could no longer be held to their work. Sevier's 
men gained the summit at the same time with Campbell's and 
part of Shelby's. The three colonels were heading their 
troops ; and as Sevier saw Shelby, he swore, by God, the Brit- 
ish had burned off part of his hair; for it was singed on 
one side of his head. 

When the Holston and Watauga men gained the crest the 
Loyalists broke and fled to the east end of the mountain, 
among the tents and baggage- wagons, where they again 
formed. But they were huddled together, while their foes 
surrounded them on every hand. The fighting had lasted an 
hour ; all hope was gone ; and De Peyster hoisted a white flag. 

In the confusion the firing continued in parts of the lines 
on both sides. Some of the backwoodsmen did not know what 
a white flag meant ; others disregarded it, savagely calling out, 
''Give them Buford's play," in allusion to Tarleton's having 
refused quarter to Buford's troops.^ Others of the men as 
they came up began shooting before they learned what had 
happened; and some Tories who had been out foraging re- 
turned at this moment, and also opened fire. A number of 
the Loyalists escaped in the turmoil, putting badges in their 
hats like those worn by certain of the American militia, 
and thus passing in safety through the Whig lines." It was 
at this time, after the white flag had been displayed, that Colo- 
nel Williams was shot, as he charged a few of the Tories 
who were still firing. The flag was hoisted again, and white 
handkerchiefs were afso waved from guns and ramrods. 
Shelby, spurring up to part of their line, ordered the Tories 
to lay down their arms, which they did.^ Campbell, at the 

* Deposition of John Long, in Enquirer, as quoted. *Chesney, p. 333. 

'Shelby MS. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN ,X^> ^' 

same moment, running among his men with his sword pointed c 
to the ground, called on them for God's saka to cease firing; 
and turning to the prisoners he bade the officers rank by 
themselves, and the men to take off their hats and sit down. 
He then ordered De Peyster to aismount ; which the latter did, 
and handed his sword to Campbell.^ The various British 
officers likewise surrendered their swords to different Amer- 
icans, many of the militia commanders who had hitherto only 
possessed a tomahawk or scalping-knife thus for the first time 
getting possession of one of the coveted weapons. 

Almost the entire British and Tory force was killed or cap- 
tured ; the only men who escaped were the few who got 
through the American lines by adopting the Whig badges. 
About three hundred of the Loyalists were killed or disabled; 
the slightly wounded do not seem to have been counted.^ 
The colonel-commandant was among the slain; of the four 
militia colonels present, two were killed, one wounded,^ and 
the other captured — a sufficient proof of the obstinacy of the 
resistance. The American loss in killed and wounded 
amounted to less than half, perhaps only a third, that of their 
foes.^ Campbell's command suffered more than any other, 
the loss among the officers being especially great, for it bore 
the chief part in withstanding the successive bayonet charges 
of the regulars, and the officers had been forced to expose 

* Campbell MSS. Letter of General George Rutledge (who was in the 

battle, an eye-witness of what he describes), May 27, 1813. But there is 
an irreconcilable conflict of testimony as to whether Campbell or Evan 
Shelby received De Peyster's sword. 

* For the Loyalist losses, see ante, note discussing their numbers. The 
South Carolina Loyalist says they lost about a third of their numljer. It 
is worthy of note that the actual fighting at King's Mountain bore much 
resemblance to that at Majuba Hill a century later; a backwoods levy was 
much like a Boer commando. 

^ In some accounts, this officer is represented as a major, in some, as a 
colonel ; at any rate he was in command of a small regiment, or fragment 
of a regiment. 

*The official report as published gave the American loss as twenty- 
eight killed and sixty wounded. The original document (in the Gates 
MSS., New York Historical Society) gives the loss in tabulated form in 
an appendix, which has not heretofore been published. It is as follows: 



502 



THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



themselves with the utmost freedom in order to rally their men 
when beaten back.^ 

The mountain-men had done a most notable deed. They 
had shown in perfection the best qualities or horse-riflemen. 
Their hardihood and perseverance had enabled them to bear 
up well under fatigue, exposure, and scanty food. Their long, 



RETURN OF KILLED AND WOUNDED 



REGIMENTS 



Campbell's 

McDowell's 

Thomas's 

Cleavland's 

Shelby's 

Sevier's 

Hayes's 

Brannon's 

Colonel Williams's 



U 



u 



J 



p-i 



19 



H 



28 



WOUNDED 



u 



hJ 



cu 



55 



62 






33 



90 



It will be seen that these returns are imperfect. They do not include 
Shelby's loss; yet his regiment was alongside of Campbell's, did its full 
share of the work, and probably suffered as much as Sevier's, for instance. 
But it is certain that in the hurry not all the killed and wounded were 
enumerated (compare Draper, pp. 302-304). Hayes's, Thomas's, and 
"Brannon's" (Brandon's) commands were some of those joining at the 
Cowpens. Winston's loss is doubtless included under Cleavland's. It 
will be seen that Williams's troops could have taken very little part in 
the action. 

^ It would be quite impossible to take notice of the countless wild 
absurdities of the various writers who have given "histories," so called, 
of the battle. One of the most recent of them, Mr. Kirke, having accepted 
as the number of the British dead two hundred and twenty-five, and the 
wounded one hundred and eighty-five, says that the disproportion shows 
"the wonderful accuracy of the backwoods rifle" — the beauty of the 
argument being that it necessarily implies that the backwoodsmen only 
fired some four hundred and ten shots. 'Mr. Kirke's account of the battle 
having been "won" owing to a remarkable ride taken by Sevier to rally 
the men at the critical moment is, of course, without any historic basis 
whatever. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 503 

swift ride, and the suddenness of the attack took their foes 
completely by surprise. Then leaving their horses, they had 
shown in the actual battle such courage, marksmanship, and 
skill in woodland fighting, that they had not only defeated but 
captured an equal number of well-armed, well-led, resolute 
men, in a strong position. The victory was of far-reaching 
importance and ranks among the decisive battles of the Rev- 
olution. It was the first great success of the Americans in 
the South, the turning-point in the Southern campaign, and 
it brought cheer to the patriots throughout the Union. The 
Loyalists of the Carolinas were utterly cast down, and never 
recovered from the blow; and its immediate effect was to 
cause Cornwallis to retreat from North Carolina, abandoning 
his first invasion of that State. ^ 

The expedition offered a striking example of the individual 
initiative so characteristic of the backwoodsmen. It was not 
ordered by any one authority; it was not even sanctioned by 
the central or State governments. Shelby and Sevier were 
the two prime movers in getting it up, Campbell exercised the 
chief command, and the various other leaders, with their 
men, simply joined the mountaineers, as they happened to 
hear of them and come across their path. The ties of disci- 
pline were of the slightest. The commanders elected their 
own chief without regard to rank or seniority; in fact the 
officer ^ who was by rank entitled to the place was hardly 
given any share in the conduct of the campaign. The au- 
thority of the commandant over the other officers, and of the 
various colonels over their troops, resembled rather the con- 
trol exercised by Indian chiefs over their warriors than the 
discipline obtained in the regular army. But the men were 
splendid individual fighters, who liked and trusted their lead- 
ers ; and the latter were bold, resolute, energetic, and in- 
telligent. 

Cornwallis feared that the mountain-men would push on 
and attack his flank; but there was no such danger. By 
^Tarleton's "Campaigns," p. i66. "Williams. 



504 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

themselves they were as little likely to assail him in force in 
the open as Andreas Hofer's Tyrolese — with whom they had 
many points in common — were to threaten Napoleon on the 
Danubian plains. Had they been Continental troops, the 
British would have had to deal with a permanent army. But 
they were only militia ^ after all, however formidable from 
their patriotic purpose and personal prowess. The backwoods 
armies were not unlike the armies of the Scotch Highlanders; 
tumultuous gatherings of hardy and warlike men, greatly to 
be dreaded under certain circumstances, but incapable of a 
long campaign and almost as much demoralized by a victory as 
by a defeat. Individually, or in small groups, they were per- 
haps even more formidable than the Highlanders; but in one 
important respect they were inferior, for they totally lacked 
the regimental organization which the clan system gave the 
Scotch Celts. 

The mountaineers had come out to do a certain thing — 
to kill Ferguson and scatter his troops. They had done it, 
and now they wished to go home. The little log huts in which 
their families lived were in daily danger of Indian attack; 
and it was absolutely necessary that they should be on hand 
to protect them. They were, for the most part, very poor 
men, whose sole sources of livelihood were the stock they 
kept beyond the mountains. They loved their country greatly, 
and had shown the sincerity of their patriotism by the spon- 
taneous way in which they risked their lives on this expe- 
dition. They had no hope of reward; for they neither ex- 

*The striking nature of the victory and its important consequences must 
not blind us to the manifold shortcomings of the Revolutionary militia. 
The mountaineers did well in spite of being militia; but they would have 
done far better under another system. The numerous failures of the 
militia as a whole must be balanced against the few successes of a portion 
of them. If the States had possessed wisdom enough to back Washington 
with Continentals, or with volunteers such as those who fought in the 
Civil War, the Revolutionary contest would have been over in three 
years. The trust in militia was a perfect curse. Many of the backwoods 
leaders knew this. The old Indian fighter, Andrew Lewis, about this time 
wrote to Gates (see Gates MSS., September 30, 1780), speaking of the 
"dastardly conduct of the militia," calling them "a set of poltroons," and 
longing for Continentals. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 505 

pected nor received any pay except in liquidated certificates, 
worth two cents on the dollar. Shelby's share of these, for 
his services as colonel throughout '80 and '81, was sold by 
him for "six yards of middling broadcloth";^ so it can be 
readily imagined how little each private got for the King's 
Mountain expedition.^ 

The day after the battle the Americans fell back toward 
the mountains, fearing lest, while cumbered by prisoners 
and wounded, they should be struck by Tarleton or perhaps 
Cruger. The prisoners were marched along on foot, each 
carrying one or two muskets, for twelve hundred stands of 
arms had been captured. The Americans had little to eat, and 
were very tired; but the plight of the prisoners was pitiable. 
Hungry, footsore, and heartbroken, they were hurried along 
by the fierce and boastful victors, who gloried in the vengeance 
they had taken, and recked little of such a virtue as magnan- 
imity to the fallen. The only surgeon in either force was 
Ferguson's. He did what he could for the wounded; but 
that was little enough, for, of course, there were no medical 
stores whatever. The Americans buried their dead in graves, 
and carried their wounded along on horse-litters. The 
wounded Loyalists were left on the field, to be cared for by 
the neighboring people. The conquerors showed neither re- 
spect nor sympathy for the leader who had so gallantly fought 
them.^ His body and the bodies of his slain followers were 
cast into two shallow trenches, and loosely covered with 
stones and earth. The wolves, coming to the carnage, speed- 
ily dug up the carcasses, and grew so bold from feasting at 
will on the dead that they no longer feared the living. For 
months afterward King's Mountain was a favorite resort for 
wolf -hunters. 

The victory once gained, the bonds of discipline over the 

* Shelby's MS. Autobiography. 

' Among these privates was the father of Davy Crockett. 

* But the accounts of indignity being shown him are not corroborated 
by Allaire and Ryerson, the two contemporary British authorities, and are 
probably untrue. 



5o6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

troops were forthwith loosened; they had been lax at the 
best, and only the strain of the imminent battle with the 
British had kept them tense for the fortnight the mountain- 
eers had been away from their homes. All the men of the 
different commands were bragging as to their respective 
merits in the battle, and the feats performed by the different 
commanders.* The general break-up of authority, of course, 
allowed full play to the vicious and criminal characters. 
Even before the mountaineers came down, the unfortunate 
Carolinas had suffered from the misdeeds of different bodies 
of ill-disciplined patriot troops,^ almost as much as from 
the British and Tories. The case was worse now. Many 
men deserted from the returning army for the especial pur- 
pose of plundering the people of the neighborhood, paying 
small heed which cause the victims had espoused; and parties 
continually left camp avowedly with this object. Campbell's 
control was of the slightest; he was forced to entreat rather 
than command the troops, complaining that they left their 
friends in "almost a worse situation than the enemy would 
have done," and expressing what was certainly a moderate 
"wish," that the soldiers would commit no "unnecessary in- 
jury" on the inhabitants of the country.^ Naturally, such very 
mild measures produced little effect in stopping the plunder- 
ing. 

However, Campbell spoke in stronger terms of an even 
worse set of outrages. The backwoodsmen had little notion 
of mercy to beaten enemies, and many of them treated the 
captured Loyalists with great brutality, even on the march,* 
Colonel Cleavland himself being one of the offenders.^ Those 
of their friends and relatives who had fallen into the hands 
of the Tories, or of Cornwallis's regulars, had fared even 

* Certificate of Matthew Willoughby, in Richmond Enquirer, as quoted. 
"Gates MSS., deposition of John Satty and others, September 7, 1780; 

of William Hamilton, September 12th, etc. 
^ Campbell's General Orders, October 14th and October 26th. 

* "Our captors . . . cutting and striking us in a most savage manner." — 
South Carolina Loyalist. 

° Allaire's "Diary," entry of November ist. 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 507 

worse; yet this cannot palliate their conduct. Campbell him- 
self, when in a fit of gusty anger, often did things he must 
have regretted afterward; but he was essentially manly, and 
his soul revolted at the continued persecution of helpless ene- 
mies. He issued a sharp manifesto in reference to the way the 
prisoners were "slaughtered and disturbed," assuring the 
troops that if it could not be prevented by moderate meas- 
ures, he would put a stop to it by taking summary vengeance 
on the offenders.-^ After this, the prisoners were, on the 
whole, well treated. When they met a couple of Continental 
officers, the latter were very polite, expressing their sympathy 
for their fate in falling into such hands ; for from Washing- 
ton and Greene down, the Continental troops disliked and 
distrusted the militia almost as much as the British regulars 
did the Tories. 

There was one dark deed of vengeance. It had come to 
be common for the victors on both sides to hang those whom 
they regarded as the chief offenders among their conquered 
opponents. As the different districts were alternately over- 
run, thf unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to swear al- 
legiance in succession to Congress and to king; and then, on 
whichever side they bore arms, they were branded as traitors. 
Moreover, the different leaders, both British and American, 
from Tarleton and Ferguson to Sumter and Marion, often 
embodied in their own ranks some of their prisoners, and 
these were of course regarded as deserters by their former 
comrades. Cornwallis, seconded by Rawdon, had set the ex- 
ample of ordering all men found in the rebel ranks after 
having sworn allegiance to the king to be hung; his under- 
officers executed the command with zeal, and the Americans, 
of course, retaliated. Ferguson's troops themselves had hung 
some of their prisoners.^ 

* Campbell's General Orders, October nth. 

^Allaire's "Diary," entry for August 20th; also see August 2d. He 
chronicles these hangings with much complacency, but is, of course, 
shocked at the "infamous" conduct of the Americans when they do 
likewise. 



5o8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

All this was fresh in the minds of the Americans who had 
just won so decisive a victory. They were accustomed to 
give full vent to the unbridled fury of their passions; they 
with difficulty brooked control; they brooded long over their 
own wrongs, which were many and real, and they were but 
little impressed by the misdeeds committed in return by their 
friends. Inflamed by hatred and the thirst for vengeance, they 
would probably have put to death some of their prisoners in 
any event; but all doubt was at an end when on their return 
march they were joined by an officer who had escaped from 
before Augusta and who brought word that Cruger's vic- 
torious Loyalists had hung a dozen of the captured patriots.^ 
This news settled the doom of some of the Tory prisoners. 
A week after the battle a number of them were tried, and 
thirty were condemned to death. Nine, including the only 
Tory colonel who had survived the battle, were hung; then 
Sevier and Shelby, men of bold, frank nature, could no longer 
stand the butchery, and peremptorily interfered, saving the 
remainder.^ Of the men who were hung, doubtless some were 
murderers and marauders, who deserved their fate; others, 
including the unfortunate colonel, were honorable men, exe- 
cuted only because they had taken arms for the cause they 
deemed right. 

Leaving the prisoners in the hands of the lowland militia, 
the mountaineers returned to their secure fastnesses in the 
high hill-valleys of the Holston, the Watauga, and the Noli- 
chucky. They had marched well and fought valiantly, and 
they had gained a great victory; all the little stockaded forts, 
all the rough log cabins on the scattered clearings, were ju- 
bilant over the triumph. From that moment their three 
leaders were men of renown.^ The legislatures of their re- 

^ Shelby MSS. 'Ibid. 

' Thirty years after the battle, when Campbell had long been dead, 
Shelby and Sevier started a most unfortunate controversy as to his con- 
duct in the battle. They insisted that he had flinched, and that victory v^'as 
mainly due to them. Doubtless they firmly believed what they said ; for, 
as already stated, the jealousies and rivalries among the backwoods leaders 
were very strong; but the burden of proof, after thirty years' silence, 



KING'S MOUNTAIN 509 

spective States thanked them publicly and voted them swords 
for their services. Campbell, next year, went down to join 
Greene's army, did gallant work at Guilford Courthouse, and 
then died of camp-fever. Sevier and Shelby had long lives 
before them. 

rested on them, and they failed to make their statements good — nor was 
their act a very gracious one. Shelby bore the chief part in the quarrel 
Campbell's surviving relatives, of course, defending the dead chieftain! 
I have carefully examined all the papers in the case, in the Tennessee 
Historical Society, the Shelby MSS., and the Campbell MSS., besides 
the files of the Richmond Enquirer, etc. ; and it is evident that the 
accusation was wholly groundless. 

Shelby and Sevier rest their case : 

1st, on their memory, thirty years after the event, of some remarks of 
Campbell to them in private after the close of the battle, which they con- 
strued as acknowledgments of bad conduct. Against these memories of 
old men it is safe to set Shelby's explicit testimony, in a letter written 
six days after the battle (see Virginia Argus, October 26, 1810), to the 
good conduct of the "gallant commander" (Campbell). 

2d, on the fact that Campbell was seen on a black horse in the rear 
during the fighting ; but a number of men of his regiment swore that he 
had given his black horse to a servant who sat in the rear, while he him- 
self rode a bay horse in the battle. See their affidavits in the Enquirer. 

3d, on the testimony of one of Shelby's brothers, who said he saw him 
in the rear. This is the only piece of positive testimony in the case. 
Some of Campbell's witnesses (as Matthew Willoughby) swore that this 
brother of Shelby was a man of bad character, engaged at the time in 
stealing cattle from both Whigs and Tories. 

4th, on the testimony of a number of soldiers who swore they did not 
see Campbell in the latter part of the battle, nor until some moments after 
the surrender. Of course, this negative testimony is simply valueless ; 
:n such a hurly-burly it would be impossible for the men in each part 
of the line to see all the commanders, and Campbell very likely did not 
reach the places where these men were until some time after the surrender. 
On the other hand, forty officers and soldiers of Campbell's, Sevier's, 
and Shelby's regiments, headed by General Rutledge, swore that they had 
seen Campbell valiantly leading throughout the whole battle, and fore- 
most at the surrender. This positive testimony conclusively settles the 
matter; it outweighs that of Shelby's brother, the only aflfirmative witness 
on the other side. But it is a fair question as to whether Campbell or 
another of Shelby's brothers received De Peyster's sword. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE HOLSTOX SETTLEMENTS TO THE END OF THE 
REVOLUTION 

1781-1783 

JOHX SE\T;ER had no sooner returned from doing- his 
share in defeating- foes who were of his own race than 
he was called on to face another set of enemies, quite as 
formidable and much more cruel. These were the red war- 
riors, the ancient owners of the soil, who were ever ready 
to take advantage of any momentary disaster that befell their 
hereditary and victorious opponents, the invading settlers. 

For many years Sevier was the best Indian fighter on the 
border. He was far more successful than Clark, for in- 
stance, inflicting greater loss on his foes and suffering much 
less himself, though he never had anything hke Clark's 
number of soldiers. His mere name was a word of dread 
to the Cherokees, the Chickamaugas, and the upper Creeks 
His success was due to several causes. He wielded great in- 
fluence over his own followers, whose love for and trust in 
"Chucky Jack'' were absolutely unbounded; for he possessed 
in the highest degree the virtues most prized on the frontier. 
He was open-hearted and hospitable, with winning ways to- 
ward all, and combined a cool head with a dauntless heart : he 
loved a battle for its own sake, and was never so much at his 
ease as when under fire; he was a first-class marksman, and 
as good a horseman as was to be found on the border. In 
his campaigns against the Indians he adopted the tactics of 
his foes, and grafted on them some important improvements of 
his own. Much of his success was due to his adroit use of 

510 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 511 

scouts or spies. He always chose for these the best woodsmen 
of the district, men who could endure as much, see as much, 
and pass through the woods as silently as the red men them- 
selves. By keeping these scouts well ahead of him, he learned 
accurately where the war-parties were. In the attack itself 
he invariably used mounted riflemen, men skilled in forest 
warfare, who rode tough little horses, on w'hich they galloped 
at speed through the forest. Once in position, they did the 
actual fighting on foot, sheltering themselves carefully behind 
the tree trunks. He moved with extreme rapidity and attacked 
with instantaneous suddenness, using ambushes and surprises 
wherever practicable.^ His knowledge of the whereabouts 
and size of the hostile parties, and the speed of his own move- 
ments, generally enabled him to attack with the advantage of 
numbers greatly on his side. He could then outflank or par- 
tially surround the Indians, while his sudden rush demoralized 
them ; so that, in striking contrast to most other Indian fight- 
ers, he inflicted a far greater loss than he received. He never 

*The old Tennessee historians, headed by Haywood, base their accounts 
of the actions on statements made by the pioneers, or some of the pioneers, 
forty or fifty 3'ears after the event ; and they do a great deal of bragging 
about the prowess of the old Indian fighters. The latter did most certainly 
perform mighty deeds ; but often in an entirely different way from that 
generally recorded ; for they faced a foe who on his own ground was 
infinitely more to be dreaded than the best trained European regulars. 
Thus Haywood says that after the battle of the Island Flats the whites 
were so encouraged that thenceforward they never asked concerning their 
enemies, "How many are they?" but, "Where are they?" Of course, this 
is a mere piece of barbaric boasting. If the whites had really acted on 
any such theory there would have been a constant succession of disasters 
like that at the Blue Licks. Sevier's latest biographer, Mr. Kirke, in the 
"Rear-guard of the Revolution," goes far beyond even the old writers. 
For instance, on p. 141, he speaks of Sevier's victories being "often" 
gained over "twenty times his own number" of Indians. As a matter 
of fact, one of the proofs of Sevier's skill as a commander is that he 
almost always fought with the advantage of numbers on his side. Not 
a single instance can be produced where either he or any one else during 
his lifetime gained a victory over twenty times his number of Indians 
unless the sieges are counted. It is necessary to keep in mind the limita- 
tions under which Haywood did his work, in order to write truthfully; 
but a debt of gratitude will always be due him for the history he wrote. 
Like Marshall's, it is the book of one who himself knew the pioneers, and 
it has preserved very much of value which would otherwise have been lost. 
The same holds true of Ramsey. 



512 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

fought a big pitched battle, but, by incessantly harrying and 
scattering the different war bands, he struck such terror to 
the hearts of the Indians that he again and again, in a succes- 
sion of wars, forced them into truces, and for the moment 
freed the settlements from their ravages. He was almost the 
only commander on the frontier who ever brought an Indian 
war, of whatever length, to an end, doing a good deal of 
damage to his foes and suffering very little himself. Still, 
he never struck a crushing blow, nor conquered a permanent 
peace. He never did anything to equal Clark's campaigns in 
the Illinois and against Vincennes, and, of course, he can- 
not for a moment be compared to his rival and successor, 
grim Old Hickory, the destroyer of the Creeks and the hero 
of New Orleans. 

When the men of the Holston or upper Tennessee valley 
settlements reached their homes after the King's Mountain 
expedition, they found them menaced by the Cherokees. Con- 
gress had endeavored in vain to persuade the chiefs of this 
tribe to make a treaty of peace, or at least to remain neutral. 
The efforts of the British agents to embroil them with the 
whites were completely successful; and in November the Otari 
or Overhill warriors began making inroads along the frontier. 
They did not attack in large bands. A constant succession 
of small parties moved swiftly through the country, burning 
cabins, taking scalps, and, above all, stealing horses. As the 
most effectual way of stopping such inroads, the alarmed and 
angered settlers resolved to send a formidable retaliatory expe- 
dition against the Overhill towns. ^ All the Holston settle- 
ments both north and south of the Virginia line joined in 
sending troops. By the first week in December, 1780, seven 
hundred mounted riflemen were ready to march, under the 
joint leadership of Colonel Arthur Campbell and of Sevier, 
the former being the senior officer. They were to meet at 
an appointed place on the French Broad. 

* Campbell MSS. Letter of Governor Thomas Jefferson, February 17, 
1781. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 513 

Sevier started first, with between two and three hundred of 
his Watauga and NoHchucky followers. He marched down 
to the French Broad, but could hear nothing of Campbell. He 
was on the great war trace of the Southern Indians, and his 
scouts speedily brought him word that they had exchanged 
shots with a Cherokee war-party, on its way to the settlements, 
and not far distant on the other side of the river. He in- 
stantly crossed and made a swift march toward the would-be 
marauders, camping on Boyd's Creek. The scouts were out 
by sunrise next morning — December i6th — and speedily 
found the Indian encampment, which the warriors had just 
left. On receipt of the news, Sevier ordered the scouts to 
run on, attack the Indians, and then instantly retreat, so as 
to draw them into an ambuscade. Meanwhile, the main body 
followed cautiously after, the men spread out in a long line, 
with the wings advanced, the left wing under Major Jesse 
Walton, the right under Major Jonathan Tipton, while Sevier 
himself commanded the centre, which advanced along the 
trail by which the scouts were to retreat. When the Indians 
were drawn into the middle the two rings were to close in, 
when the whole party would be killed or captured. 

The plan worked well. The scouts soon came up with the 
warriors, and, after a moment's firing, ran back, with the 
Indians in hot pursuit. Sevier's men lay hid, and when the 
leading warriors were close up they rose and fired. Walton's 
wing closed in promptly; but Tipton was too slow, and the 
startled Cherokees ran off through the opening he had left, 
rushing into a swamp impassable for horsemen, and scat- 
tered out, each man for himself, being soon beyond pursuit. 
Nevertheless, Sevier took thirteen scalps, many weapons, and 
all their plunder. In some of their bundles there were proclama- 
tions from Sir Henry Clinton and other British commanders ^ 

^ Campbell MSS. Copy of the official report of Colonel Arthur Camp- 
bell, January 15, 1781. The accounts of this battle of Boyd's Creek 
illustrate well the growth of such an affair under the hands of writers 
who place confidence in all kinds of tradition, especially if they care more 
for picturesqueness than for accuracy. The contemporary official report 



514 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

The Indians were too surprised and panic-struck to offer any 
serious resistance, and not a man of Sevier's force was even 
wounded. 

Having thus made a very pretty stroke, Sevier returned to 
the French Broad, where Campbell joined him on the 22d, 
with four hundred troops. Among them were a large num- 
ber of Shelby's men, under the command of Major Joseph 
Martin. The next day the seven hundred horsemen made 
a forced march to the Little . Tennessee ; and, on the 24th, 

is explicit. There were three hundred whites and seventy Indians. Of 
the latter thirteen were slain. Campbell's whole report shows a jealousy 
of Sevier, whom he probably knew well enough was a man of superior 
ability to himself; but this jealousy appears mainly in the coloring. He 
does not change any material fact, and there is no reason for questioning 
the substantial truth of his statements. 

Forty years afterward Haywood writes of the affair, trying to tell 
simply the truth, but obliged to rely mainly on oral tradition. He speaks 
of Sevier's troops as only two hundred in number ; and says twenty-eight 
Indians were killed. He does not speak of the number of the Indians, 
but from the way he describes Sevier's troops as encircling them he evi- 
dently knew that the white men were more numerous than their foes. 
His mistake as to the number of Indian dead is easily explicable. The 
official report gives twenty-nine as the number killed in the entire cam- 
paign, and Haywood, as in the Island Flats battle, simply puts the total 
of several skirmishes into one. 

Thirty years later comes Ramsey. He relies on traditions that have 
grown more circumstantial and less accurate. He gives two accounts of 
what he calls "one of the best fought battles in the border war of 
Tennessee" ; one of these accounts is mainly true ; the other entirely false ; 
he does not try to reconcile them. He says three whites were wounded, 
although the official report says that in the whole campaign but one man 
was killed and two wounded. He reduces Sevier's force to 170 men, and 
calls the Indians "a large body." 

Thirty-four years later comes Mr. Kirke, with the "Rear-guard of the 
Revolution." Out of his inner consciousness he evolves the fact that 
there were "not less than a thousand" Indians, whom Sevier, at the head 
of one hundred and seventy men, vanquishes, after a heroic combat, in 
which Sevier and some others perform a variety of purely imaginary feats. 
IBy diminishing the number of the whites, and increasing that of the 
Indians, he thus makes the relative force of the latter about twenty-five 
times as great as it really was, and converts a clever ambuscade, whereby 
the whites gave a smart drubbing to a body of Indians one-fourth their 
own number, into a Homeric victory over a host six times as numerous 
as the conquerors. 

This is not a solitary instance ; on the contrary, it is typical of almost 
all that is gravely set forth as history by a number of writers on these 
Western border wars, whose books are filled from cover to cover with 
just such matter. Almost all their statements are partly, and very many 
are wholly, without foundation. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1:781-1783 515 

crossed it unopposed, making a feint at one ford, while the 
main body passed rapidly over another. The Indians did 
not have the numbers to oppose so formidable a body of good 
fighters, and only ventured on a little very long-range and 
harmless skirmishing with the vanguard. Dividing into two 
bodies, the troops destroyed Chota and other towns up and 
down the stream, finding in them a welcome supply of pro- 
visions. The next day Martin, with a detachment, fell on 
a party of flying Indians, killed one, and captured seventeen 
horses loaded with clothing, skins, and the scanty household 
furniture of the cabins ; while another detachment destroyed 
the part of Chilhowee that was on the nearer side of the river. 
On the 26th the rest of Chilhowee was burned, three Indians 
killed, and nine captured. Tipton, with one hundred and fifty 
men, was sent to attack another town beyond the river; but, 
owing to the fault of their commander,^ this body failed to 
get across. The Indian woman, Nancy Ward, who in '76 
had given the settlers timely warning of the intended attack 
by her tribesmen here came into camp. She brought over- 
tures of peace from the chiefs, but to these Campbell and 
Sevier would not Hsten, as they wished first to demolish the 
Hiawassee towns, where the warriors had been especially hos- 
tile. Accordingly, they marched thither. On their way there 
were a couple of skirmishes, in which several Indians were 
killed and one white man. The latter, whose name was El- 
liot, was buried in the Tellico town, a cabin being burned 
down over his grave that the Indians might not know where 
it was. The Indians watched the army from the hills. At 
one point a warrior was seen stationed on a ridge to beat a 
drum and give signals to the rest; but the spies of the whites 
stole on him unawares, and shot him. The Hiawassee towns 

^ His "unmilitary behavior," says Campbell. Ramsey makes hiifi one 
of the (imaginary) wounded at Boyd's Creek. Kirke improves on this by 
describing him as falling "badly wounded" just as he was about to move 
his wing forward, and ascribes his fall to the failure of the wmg to 
advance. 



5i6 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

and all the stores of provisions they contained were destroyed, 
the work being finished on the last day of the year. 

On January i, 1781, the army broke up into detachments 
which went home by different routes, some additional towns 
being destroyed. The Indians never ventured to offer the 
invaders a pitched battle. Many of the war-parties were ab- 
sent on the frontier, and, at the very time their own country 
was being invaded, they committed ravages in Powell's Val- 
ley, along the upper Holston, and on the Kentucky road, near 
Cumberland Gap. The remaining warriors were cowed by 
Sevier's first success, and were puzzled by the rapidity with 
which the troops moved ; for the mounted riflemen went at 
speed wherever they wished, and were not encumbered by 
baggage, each man taking only his blanket and a wallet of 
parched corn. 

All the country of the Overhill Cherokees was laid waste, 
a thousand cabins were burned and fifty thousand bushels of 
corn destroyed. Twenty-nine warriors in all were killed, 
and seventeen women and children captured, not including 
the family of Nancy Ward, who were treated as friends, not 
prisoners. But one white man was killed and two wounded.^' 

* Campbell MSS. Arthur Campbell's official report. The figures of the 
cabins and corn destroyed are probably exaggerated. All the Teimessee 
historians, down to Phelan, are hopelessly in the dark over this campaign. 
Haywood actually duplicates it (pp. 63 and 99), recounting it first as 
occurring in '79, and then with widely changed incidents, as happening in 
'81 — making two expeditions. When he falls into such a tremendous 
initial error, it is not to be wondered at that the details he gives are very 
untrustworthy. Ramsey corrects Haywood as far as the two separate 
expeditions are concerned, but he makes a number of reckless statements 
apparently on no better authority than the traditions current among the 
border people, sixty or seventy years after the event. These stand on 
the same foundation with the baseless tale that makes Isaac Shelby take 
part in the battle of Island Flats. The Tennessee historians treat Sevier 
as being the chief commander ; but he was certainly under Campbell ; the 
address they sent out to the Indians is signed by Campbell first, Sevier 
second, and Martin third. Haywood, followed by Ramsey, says that 
Sevier marched to the Chickamauga towns, which he destroyed, and then 
marched down the Coosa to the region of the Cypress Swamps. But 
Campbell's official report says that the towns "in the neighborhood of 
Chickamauga and the Town of Cologn, situated on the sources of the 
Mobile" were not destroyed, nor visited, and he carefully enumerates all 
the towns that the troops burned and the regions they went through. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 517 

In the burnt towns and on the dead warriors were found 
many letters and proclamations from the British agents and 
commanders, showing that almost every chief in the nation 
had been carrying on a double game; for the letters covered 
the periods at which they had been treating with the Ameri- 
cans and earnestly professing their friendship for the latter 
and their determination to be neutral in the contest then wag- 
ing. As Campbell wrote in his report to the Virginian gov- 
ernor, no people had ever acted with more foolish duplicity. 

Before returning, the three commanders, Campbell, Sevier, 
and Martin, issued an address to the Otari chiefs and war- 
riors, and sent it by one of their captured braves, who was to 
deliver it to the head men.^ The address set forth what the 
white troops had done, telling the Indians it was a just pun- 
ishment for their folly and perfidy in consenting to carry 
out the wishes of the British agents; it warned them shortly 
to come in and treat for peace lest their country should again 
be visited, and not only laid waste, but conquered and held 
for all time. Some chiefs came in to talk, and were met at 
Chota,^ but though they were anxious for peace they could 
not restrain the vindictive spirit of the young braves, nor 
prevent them from harassing the settlements. Nor could the 
white commanders keep the frontiersmen from themselves 
settling within the acknowledged boundaries of the Indian 

They did not go near Chickamauga nor the Coosa. Unless there is some 
documentary evidence in favor of the assertions of Haywood and Ramsey, 
they cannot for a moment be talcen against the expHcit declaration of the 
official report. 

Mr. Kirke merely follovi^s Ramsay, and adds a few flourishes of his own, 
such as that at the Chickamauga towns "the blood of the slaughtered 
cattle dyed red the Tennessee" for some twenty miles, and that "the homes 
of over forty thousand people were laid in ashes." This last estimate is 
just about ten times too strong, for the only country visited was that of 
the Overhill Cherokees, and the outside limit for the population of the 
devastated territory would be some four thousand souls, or a third of the 
Cherokee tribe, which all told numbered perhaps twelve thousand people. 

^Campbell MSS. Issued at Kai-a-tee, January 4, 1781 ; the copy sent to 
Governor Jefferson is dated February 28th. 

^The Tennessee historians all speak of this as a treaty; and probably 
a meeting did take place, as described ; but it led to nothing, and no actual 
treaty was made until some months later. 



5i8 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Territory. They were constantly pressing against the Hnes, 
and eagerly burst through at every opening. When the army 
marched, back from burning the Overhill towns, they found 
that adventurous settlers had followed in its wake, and had 
already made clearings and built cabins near all the best 
springs down to the French Broad. People of every rank 
showed keen desire to encroach on the Indian lands. ^ 

The success of this expedition gave much relief to the 
border, and was hailed with pleasure throughout Virginia ^ 
and North Carolina. Nevertheless, the war continued without 
a break, bands of warriors from the middle towns coming 
to the help of their disheartened Overhill brethren. Sevier 
determined to try one of his swift, sudden strokes against 
those new foes. Early in March he rode off at the head of a 
hundred and fifty picked horsemen, resolute to penetrate the 
hitherto untrodden wilds that shielded the far-off fastnesses 
where dwelt the Erati. Nothing shows his daring, adven- 
turous nature more clearly than his starting on such an expe- 
dition; and only a man of strong will and much power could 
have carried it to a successful conclusion. For a hundred 
and fifty miles he led his horsemen through a mountainous 
wilderness where there was not so much as a hunter's trail. 
They wound their way through the deep defiles and among 
the towering peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, descend- 
ing by passes so precipitous that it was with difficulty the 
men led down them even such surefooted beasts as their 
hardy hill-horses. At last they burst out of the woods and 
fell like a thunderbolt on the towns of the Erati, nestling 
in their high gorges. The Indians were completely taken 
by surprise ; they had never dreamed that they could be at- 
tacked in their innermost strongholds, cut off, as they were, 
from the nearest settlements by vast trackless wastes of 
woodland and lofty, bald-topped mountain chains. They had 

* Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," II. Letter of Colonel William 
Christian to Governor of Virginia, April lo, 1781. 
'State Department MSS., No. 15, February 25, 1781. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 519 

warriors enough to overwhelm Sevier's band by sheer force 
of numbers, but he gave them no time to gather. FalHng 
on their main town he took it by surprise and stormed it, 
kilHng thirty warriors and capturing a large number of 
women and children. Of these, however, he was able to 
bring in but twenty, who were especially valuable because 
they could be exchanged for white captives. He burnt two 
other towns and three small villages, destroying much pro- 
vision and capturing two hundred horses. He himself had 
but one man killed and one wounded. Before the startled 
warriors could gather to attack him he plunged once more 
into the wilderness, carrying his prisoners and plunder, and 
driving the captured horses before him; and so swift were 
his motions that he got back in safety to the settlements.^ 
The length of the journey, the absolutely untravelled nature 
of the country, which no white man, save perhaps an occa- 
sional wandering hunter, had ever before traversed, the ex- 
treme difficulty of the route over the wooded, cliff-scarred 
mountains, and the strength of the Cherokee towns that were 
to be attacked, all combined to render the feat most diffi- 
cult. For its successful performance there was need of cour- 
age, hardihood, woodcraft, good judgment, stealth, and 
great rapidity of motion. It was one of the most brilliant ex- 
ploits of the border war. 

Even after his return, Sevier was kept busy pursuing and 
defeating small bands of plundering savages. In the early 
summer he made a quick inroad south of the French Broad. 
At the head of over a hundred hard riders, he fell suddenly 
on the camp of a war-party, took a dozen scalps, and scattered 

^Ibid. Letters of Colonel William Christian, April lo, 1781 ; of Joseph 
Martin, March ist; and of Arthur Campbell, March 28th. The accounts 
vary slightly: for instance, Christian gives him one hundred and eighty, 
Campbell only one hundred and fifty, men. One account says he killed 
thirty, another tvi^enty, Indians. Martin, by the way. speaks bitterly of 
the militia as men "-who do duty at times as their inclination leads them." 
The incident, brilliant enough anyhow, of course grows a little under 
Ramsey and Haywood; and Mr. Kirke fairly surpasses himself when he 
comes to it. 



520 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the rest of the Indians in every direction. A succession of 
these blows completely humbled the Cherokees, and they 
sued for peace; thanks to Sevier's tactics, they had suffered 
more loss than they had inflicted, an almost unknown thing 
in these wars with the forest Indians. In midsummer peace 
was made by a treaty at the Great Island of the Holston. 

During the latter half of the year, when danger from the 
Indians had temporarily ceased, Sevier and Shelby led down 
bands of mounted riflemen to assist the American forces in the 
Carolinas and Georgia. They took an honorable share under 
Marion in some skirmishes against the British and Hessians,* 
but they did not render any special service, and Greene found 
he could place no reliance on them for the actual stubborn 
campaigns that broke the strength of the king's armies. They 
enlisted for very short periods, and when their time was up 
promptly returned to their mountains, for they were sure to 
get homesick and uneasy about their families; and neither 
the officers nor the soldiers had any proper idea of the value 
of obedience. Among their own hills and forests, and for 
their own work, they were literally unequalled; and they 
were ready enough to swoop down from their strongholds, 
strike some definite blow, or do some single piece of valiant 
fighting in the low country, and then fall back as quickly 
as they had come. But they were not particularly suited for 
pitched battles in the open, and were quite unfitted to carry 
on a long campaign. 

* Shelby MSS. Of course Shelby paints these skirmishes in very strong 
colors. Haywood and Ramsey base their accounts purely on his papers. 
Ramsey and his followers endeavor to prove that the mountain-men did 
excellently in these 1781 campaigns ; but the endeavor is futile. They 
were good for some one definite stroke, but their shortcomings were 
manifest the instant a long campaign was attempted ; and the comments 
of the South Carolina historians upon their willingness to leave at 
unfortunate moments are on the whole just. They behaved somewhat as 
Stark and the victors at Bennington did when they left the American army 
before Saratoga; although their conduct was on the whole better than 
that of Stark's men. They were a brave, hardy, warlike band of irregulars, 
probably better fighters than any similar force on this continent or else- 
where ; but occasional brilliant exceptions must not blind us to the general 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 521 

In one respect, the mountain-men deserve great credit for 
their conduct in the Carolinas. As a general thing, they 
held aloof from the plundering. The frightful character of 
the civil war between the Whigs and Tories, and the excesses 
of the British armies, had utterly demoralized the Southern 
States ; they were cast into a condition of anarchic disorder 
and the conflicts between the Patriots and Loyalists degener- 
ated into a bloody scramble for murder and plunder wherein 
the Whigs behaved as badly as ever the Tories had done.^ 
Men were shot, houses burned, horses stolen, and negroes 

inefficiency of the Revolutionary militia, and their great inferiority to the 
Continentals of Washington, Greene, and Wayne. See Note, p. 532. 

^In the Clay MSS. there is a letter from Jesse Benton (the father of 
the great Missouri Senator) to Colonel Thomas Hart, of March 23, 1783, 
which gives a glimpse of the way in which the Tories were treated even 
after the British had been driven out; it also shows how soon maltreat- 
ment of royalists was turned into general misrule and rioting. The letter 
runs, in part, as follows : 

"I cannot help mentioning to You an Evil which seems intaild upon 
the upper part of this State, to wit, Mobbs and commotions amongst 
the People. I shall give you the particulars of the last Work of this 
kind which lately happened, & which is not yet settled ; Plunder being 
the first cause. The Scoundrels, under the cloak of great Whigs cannot 
bear the thought of paying the unfortunate Wretches whom Fame and ill 
will call Tories (though many of them perhaps honest, industrious and 
useful men) for plundered property; but on the other Hand think they 
together with their Wives and Children (who are now beging for Mercy) 
ought to be punished to the utmost extremity. I am sorry that Col. 
O Neal and his brother Pete, who have been useful men and whom I 
am in hopes are pretty clear of plundering, should have a hand in 
Arbitrary measures at this Day when the Civil Laws might take place. 

"One Jacob Graves son of John of old Stinking Quarter, went oflf & 
was taken with the British Army, escaped from the Guards, came & 
surrendered himself to Gen'l Butler, about the middle of Last month & 
went to his Family upon Parole. Col. O Neal being informed of this, 
armed himself with gun and sword, went to Graves's in a passion. Graves 
shut the Door, O Neal broke it down, Graves I believe thinking his own 
Life at stake, took his Brothers Gun which happened to be in the house 
& shot O Neal through the Breast. 

"O Neal has suffered much but is now recovering. This accident has 
inflamed and set to work those who were afraid of suffering for their 
unjust and unwarrantable Deeds, the Ignorant honest men are also willing 
to take part against their Rulers & I don't know when nor where it is to 
end, but I wish it was over. At the Guilford Feb'y Court Peter O Neal 
& others armed with clubs in the Face of the Court then sitting and in 
the Court house too, beat some men called Tories so much that their 
Lives were despaired of, broke up the Court and finally have stopd the 
civil Laws in that County. Your old Friend Col. Dunn got out at 



522 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

kidnapped; even the unfortunate freedmen of color were hur- 
ried off and sold into slavery. It was with the utmost diffi- 
culty that a few wise and good commanders, earnest lovers 
of their country, like the gallant General Pickens, were able 
to put a partial stop to these outrages, and gather a few 
brave men to help in overcoming the foreign foe. To the 
honor of the troops under Sevier and Shelby, be it said that 
they took little part in these misdeeds. There were doubtless 
some men among them who shared in all the evil of that tur- 
bulent time; but most of these frontier riflemen, though poor 
and ignorant, were sincerely patriotic; they marched to fight 
the oppressor, to drive out the stranger, not to ill-treat their 
own friends and countrymen. 

Toward the end of these campaigns, which marked the 
close of the Revolutionary struggle, Shelby was sent to the 
North Carolina legislature, where he served for a couple of 
terms. Then, when peace was formally declared, he re- 
moved to Kentucky, where he lived ever afterward. Sevier 
stayed in his home on the Nolichucky, to be thenceforth, while 
his life lasted, the leader in peace and war of his beloved 
mountaineers. 

Early in 1782, fresh difficulties arose with the Indians. In 
the war just ended the Cherokees themselves had been chiefly 
to blame. The whites were now in their turn the aggressors, 
the trouble being, as usual, that they encroached on lands se- 
cured to the red men by solemn treaty. The Watauga set- 
tlements had been kept compact by the presence of the neigh- 
boring Indians. They had grown steadily but slowly. They 
extended their domain slightly after every treaty, such treaty 
being usually though not always the sequel to a successful 
war; but they never gained any large stretch of territory at 

Window, fled in a Fright, took cold and died immediately. Rowan 
County Court I am told was also broke up. 

"If O Neal should die I fear that a number of the unhappy wretches 
called Tories will be Murdered, and that a man disposed to do justice dare 
not interfere, indeed the times seem to imitate the commencement of the 
Regulators." 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 523 

once. Had it not been for the presence of the hostile tribes 
they would have scattered far and wide over the country, and 
could not have formed any government. 

The preceding spring (1781) the land office had been 
closed, not to be opened until after peace with Great Britain 
was definitely declared, the utter demoralization of the gov- 
ernment bringing the work to a standstill. The rage for 
land speculation, however, which had continued even in the 
stormiest days of the Revolution, grew tenfold in strength 
after Yorktown, when peace at no distant day was assured. 
The wealthy land speculators of the seaboard counties made 
agreements of various sorts with the more prominent fron- 
tier leaders in the effort to secure large tracts of good coun- 
try. The system of surveying was much better than in 
Kentucky, but it was still by no means perfect, as each man 
placed his plot wherever he chose, first describing the bound- 
ary-marks rather vaguely, and leaving an illiterate old hunter 
to run the lines. Moreover, the intending settler frequently 
absented himself for several months, or was temporarily chased 
away by the Indians, while the official record books were most 
imperfect. In consequence, many conflicts ensued. The 
frontiersmen settled on any spot of good land they saw fit, 
and clung to it with defiant tenacity, whether or not it after- 
ward proved to be on a tract previously granted to some land 
company or rich private individual who had never been a 
hundred miles from the seacoast. Public officials went into 
these speculations. Thus Major Joseph Martin, while an 
Indian agent, tried to speculate in Cherokee lands. ^ Of 
course, the officer's public influence was speedily destroyed 
when he once undertook such operations; he could no longer 
do justice to outsiders. Occasionally, the falseness of his 
position made him unjust to the Indians ; more often it forced 
him into league with the latter, and made him hostile to the 
borderers.^ 

^See "Virginia State Papers," III, 560. 

^ This is a chief reason why the reports of the Indian agents are so often 
bitterly hostile toward those of their own color. 



524 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Before the end of the Revolution, the trouble between the 
actual settlers and the land speculators became so great that 
a small subsidiary civil war was threatened. The rough rifle- 
men resolutely declined to leave their clearings, while the 
titular owners appealed to the authority of the loose land-laws, 
and wished them to be backed up by the armed force of the 
State.^ 

The government of North Carolina was far too weak to 
turn out the frontiersmen in favor of the speculators to whom 
the land had been granted — often by fraudulent means, or 
at least for a ridiculously small sum of money. Still less 
could it prevent its unruly subjects from trespassing on the 
Indian country, or protect them if they were themselves threat- 
ened by the savages. It could not do justice as between its 
own citizens, and it was quite incompetent to preserve the 
peace between them and outsiders.^ The borderers were left 
to work out their own salvation. 

By the beginning of 1782, settlements were being made 
south of the French Broad. This alarmed and irritated the 
Indians, and they sent repeated remonstrances to Major Mar- 
tin, who was Indian agent, and also to the governor of North 
Carolina. The latter wrote Sevier, directing him to drive oft 
the intruding settlers, and pull down their cabins. Sevier did 
not obey. He took purely the frontier view of the question, 
and he had no intention of harassing his own stanch adher- 
ents for the sake of the savages whom he had so often fought. 
Nevertheless, the Cherokees always liked him personally, for 
he was as open-handed and free-hearted to them as to every 
one else, and treated them to the best he had whenever they 
came to his house. He had much justification for his re- 
fusal, too, in the fact that the Indians themselves were always 
committing outrages. When the Americans reconquered the 
Southern States many Tories fled to the Cherokee towns, and 

* See in Durrett MSS. "Papers relating to Isaac Shelby" ; letter of John 
Taylor to Isaac Shelby, June 8, 1782. 
"Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 213. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 525 

incited the savages to hostility; and the outlying settlements 
of the borderers were being burned and plundered by members 
of the very tribes whose chiefs were at the same time writing 
to the governor to complain of the white encroachments.^ 

When, in April, the Cherokees held a friendly talk with 
Evan Shelby they admitted that the Tories among them and 
their own evil-disposed young men committed ravages on the 
whites, but asserted that most of them greatly desired peace, 
for they were weak and distressed, and had shrunk much in 
numbers.^ The trouble was that when they were so abso- 
lutely unable to control their own bad characters, it was in- 
evitable that they should become embroiled with the whites. 

The worst members of each race committed crimes against 
the other, and not only did the retaliation often fall on the 
innocent, but, unfortunately, even the good men were apt to 
make common cause with the criminals of their own color. 
Thus in July the Chickamaugas sent in a talk for peace ; 
but at that very time a band of their young braves made a 
foray into Powell's Valley, killing two settlers and driving 
off some stock. They were pursued, one of their number 
killed, and most of the stock retaken. In the same month, 
on the other hand, two friendly Indians, who had a canoe 
laden with peltry, were murdered on the Holston by a couple 
of white ruffians, who then attempted to sell the furs. They 
were discovered, and the furs taken from them ; but to their 
disgrace be it said, the people roundabout would not suffer 
the criminals to be brought to justice.^ 

The mutual outrages continued throughout the summer, 
and in September they came to a head. The great majority 
of the Otari of the Overhill towns were still desirous of 
peace, and after a council of their head men the chief Old 
Tassel, of the town of Chota, sent on their behalf a strong 
appeal to the governors of both Virginia and North Carolina. 
The document is written with such dignity, and yet in a tone 

^ Ibid., p. 4. ^ Ibid., p. 171, April 29, 1782. ^ Ibid., pp. 213, 248. 



526 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of such curious pathos, that it is worth giving in full, as put- 
ting in strongest possible form the Indian side of the case, and 
as a sample of the best of these Indian "talks." 

"A talk to Colonel Joseph Martin, by the Old Tassel, in 
Chota, the 25th of September, 1782, in favour of the whole 
nation. For His Excellency, the Governor of North Caro- 
lina. Present, all the chiefs of the friendly towns and a 
number of young men. 

"Brother : I am now going to speak to you. I hope you 
will listen to me. A string. I intended to come this fall and 
see you, but there was such confusion in our country, I thought 
it best for me to stay at home and send my Talks by our 
friend Colonel Martin, who promised to deliver them safe 
to you. We are a poor distressed people, that is in great 
trouble, and we hope our elder brother will take pity on us 
and do us justice. Your people from Nolichucky are daily 
pushing us out of our lands. We have no place to hunt on. 
Your people have built houses within one day's walk of our 
towns. We don't want to quarrel with our elder brother; 
we, therefore, hope our elder brother will not take our lands 
from us, that the Great Man above gave us. He made you 
and he made us ; we are all his children, and we hope our 
elder brother will take pity on us, and not take our lands from 
us that our father gave us, because he is stronger than we 
are. We are the first people that ever lived on this land; it 
is ours, and why will our elder brother take it from us? It 
is true, some time past, the people over the great water per- 
suaded some of our young men to do some mischief to our 
elder brother, which our principal men were sorry for. But 
you our elder brothers come to our towns and took satisfac- 
tion, and then sent for us to come and treat with you, which 
we did. Then our elder brother promised to have the line 
run between us agreeable to the first treaty, and all that should 
be found over the line should be moved off. But it is not 
done yet. We have done nothing to offend our elder brother 
since the last treaty, and why should our elder brother want 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 527 

to quarrel with us? We have sent to the Governor of Vir- 
ginia on the same subject. We hope that between you both, 
you will take pity on your younger brother, and send Col. 
Sevier, who is a good man, to have all your people moved off 
our land. I should say a great deal more, but our friend, 
Colonel Martin, knows all our grievances and he can in- 
form you. A string."^ 

The speech is interesting, because it shows that the Indians 
both liked and respected Sevier, their most redoubtable foe; 
and because it acknowledges that in the previous war the 
Cherokees themselves had been the wrong-doers. Even Old 
Tassel had been implicated in the treacherous conduct of the 
chiefs at that period; but he generally acted very well, and 
belonged with the large number of his tribesmen who, for 
no fault of their own, were shamefully misused by the whites. 

The white intruders were not removed. No immediate col- 
lision followed on this account; but when Old Tassel's talk 
was forwarded to the governor, small parties of Chickamau- 
gas, assisted by young braves from among the Creeks and 
Erati, had already begun to commit ravages on the outlying 
settlements. Two weeks before Old Tassel spoke, on the nth 
of September, a family of whites was butchered on Moccasin 
Creek. The neighbors gathered, pursued the Indians, and 
recaptured the survivors.^ Other outrages followed through- 
out the month. Sevier as usual came to the rescue of the 
angered settlers. He gathered a couple of hundred mounted 
riflemen, and made one of his swift retaliatory inroads. His 
men were simply volunteers, for there was no money in the 
country treasury with which to pay them or provide them 
with food and provisions; it was their own quarrel, and 
they furnished their own services free, each bringing his 
horse, rifle, ammunition, blanket, and wallet of parched corn. 
Naturally, such troops made war purely according to their 

* Ramsey, 271. The "strings" of wampum were used to mark periods 
and to indicate, and act as reminders of, special points in the speech. 
^Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 3U- 



528 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

own ideas, and cared nothing whatever for the commands of 
those governmental bodies who were theoretically their su- 
periors. They were poor men, stanch patriots, who had suf- 
fered much and done all they could during the Revolution ;^ 
now, when threatened by the savages, they were left to protect 
themselves, and they did it in their own way. Sevier led 
his force down through the Overhill towns, doing their people 
no injury and holding a peace-talk with them. They gave 
him a half-breed, John Watts, afterward one of their chiefs, 
as guide, and he marched quickly against some of the Chick- 
amauga towns, where he destroyed the cabins and provision 
hoards. Afterward, he penetrated to the Coosa, where he 
burned one or two Creek villages. The inhabitants fled from 
the towns before he could reach them; and his own motions 
were so rapid that they could never gather in force strong 
enough to assail him.^ Very few Indians were killed, and 



^Ibid. 

' The authority for this expedition is Haywood (p. io6) ; Ramsey simply 
alters one or two unimportant details. Haywood commits so many 
blunders concerning the early Indian wars that it is only safe to regard 
his accounts as true in outline ; and even for this outline it is to be wished 
we had additional authority. Mr. Kirke, in the "Rear-guard," p. 313, 
puts in an account of a battle on Lookout Mountain, wherein Sevier and 
his two hundred men defeat "five hundred tories and savages." He does 
not even hint at his authority for this, unless in a sentence of the preface 
where he says : "A large part of my material I have derived from what 
may be termed 'original sources' — old settlers." Of course the statement 
of an old settler is worthless when it relates to an alleged important 
event which took place one hundred and five years before, and yet escaped 
the notice of all contemporary and subsequent historians. In plain truth, 
unless Mr. Kirke can produce something like contemporary — or approxi- 
mately contemporary — documentary evidence for this mythical battle, it 
must be set down as pure invention. It is with real reluctance that I 
speak thus of Mr. Kirke's books. He has done good service in populariz- 
ing the study of early Western history, and especially in calling attention 
to the wonderful careers of Sevier and Robertson. Had he laid no claim 
to historic accuracy I should have been tempted to let his books pass 
unnoticed ; but in the preface to his "John Sevier" he especially asserts 
that his writings "may be safely accepted as authentic history."^ On first 
reading his book I was surprised and pleased at the information it con- 
tained ; when I came to study the subject I was still more surprised and 
much loss pleased at discovering such wholesale inaccuracy — to be per- 
fectly just, I should be obliged to use a stronger term. Even a popular 
history ought to pay at least some little regard to truth. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 529 

apparently none of Sevier's people ; a Tory, an ex-British 
sergeant, then Hving with an Indian squaw, was among the 
slain. 

This foray brought but a short relief to the settlements. 
On Christmas Day three men were killed on the Clinch; 
and it was so unusual a season for the war-parties to be 
abroad that the attack caused wide-spread alarm. ^ Early in 
the spring of 1873 the ravages began again.- Some time be- 
fore. General Wayne had addressed the Creeks and Choctaws, 
reproaching them with the aid they had given the British, 
and threatening them with a bloody chastisement if they 
would not keep the peace.^ A threat from Mad Anthony 
meant something, and the Indians paid at least momentary 
heed. Georgia enjoyed a short respite, which, as usual, the 
more reckless borderers strove to bring to an end by encroach- 
ing on the Indian lands, while the State authorities, on the 
other hand, did their best to stop not only such encroach- 
ments, but also all travelling and hunting in the Indian coun- 
try, and especially the marking of trees. This last operation, 
as Governor Lyman Hall remarked in his proclamation, gave 
"Great Offense to the Indians,"^ who thoroughly understood 
that the surveys indicated the approaching confiscation of 
their territory. 

Toward the end of 1783 a definite peace was concluded 
with the Chickasaws, who ever afterward remained friendly,^ 
but the Creeks, while amusing the Georgians by pretending 
to treat, let their parties of young braves find an outlet for 
their energies by assailing the Holston and Cumberland set- 
tlements.® The North Carolina legislature, becoming impa- 
tient, passed a law summarily appropriating certain lands that 
were claimed by the unfortunate Cherokees. The troubled 
peace was continually threatened by the actions either of 

'Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 424- 'Ibid., p. 479- 
'State Department MSS. Letters of Washington, No. 15-', vol. XI, 
February i, 1782. 
* Gazette of the State of Georgia, July 10, 1783. 
""Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, p. 548. Ibid., p. 532. 



530 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ungovernable frontiersmen or of bloodthirsty and vindictive 
Indians.^ Small parties of scouts were incessantly employed 
in patrolling the Southern border. 

Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the Indians was 
over. The Holston settlements throve lustily. Wagon-roads 
were made, leading into both Virginia and North Carolina. 
Settlers thronged into the country, the roads were well trav- 
elled, and the clearings became very numerous. The villages 
began to feel safe without stockades, save those on the ex- 
treme border, which were still built in the usual frontier style. 
The scattering log schoolhouses and meeting-houses increased 
steadily in numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to 
become the leading and typical creed of the West, first gained 
a foothold along the Holston, with a congregation of seventy- 
six members.^ 

The people of the upper Tennessee valleys long contin- 
ued one in interest as in blood. Whether they lived north or 
south of the Virginia or North Carolina boundary, they 
were more closely united to one another than they were to 
the seaboard governments of which they formed part. Their 
history is not generally studied as a whole, because one portion 
of their territory continued part of Virginia, while the re- 
mainder was cut off from North Carolina as the nucleus of a 
separate State. But in the time of their importance, in the 
first formative period of the young West, all these Holston 
settlements must be treated together, or else their real place 
in our history will be totally misunderstood.^ 

The two towns of Abingdon and Jonesboro, respectively 
north and south of the line, were the centres of activity. 
In Jonesboro the log court-house, with its clapboard roof, was 

^Ibid., p. 560. 

* "History of Methodism in Tennessee," John B. M'Ferrin (Nashville, 
1873), I, 26. 

' Nothing gives a more fragmentary and twisted view of our history 
than to treat it purely by States ; this is the reason that a State history 
is generally of so little importance when taken by itself. On the other 
hand, it is of course true that the fundamental features in our history 
can only be shown by giving proper prominence to the individual State life. 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 531 

abandoned, and in its place a twenty- four-foot-square build- 
ing of hewn logs was put up; it had a shingled roof and plank 
floors, and contained a justice's bench, a lawyers' and clerk's 
bar, and a sheriff's box to sit in. The county of Washington 
was now further subdivided, its southwest portion being 
erected into the county of Greene, so that there were three 
counties of North Carolina west of the mountains. The court 
of the new county consisted of several justices, who appointed 
their own clerk, sheriff, attorney for the State, entry-taker, 
surveyor, and registrar. They appropriated money to pay 
for the use of the log house where they held sessions, laid a 
tax of a shilling specie on every hundred pounds for the 
purpose of erecting public buildings, laid out roads, issued 
licenses to build mills, and bench warrants to take suspected 
persons.^ 

Abingdon was a typical little frontier town of the class 
that immediately succeeded the stockaded hamlets. A public 
square had been laid out, round which, and down the strag- 
gling main street, the few buildings were scattered; all were 
of logs, from the court-house and small jail down. There 
were three or four taverns. The two best were respectively 
houses of entertainment for those who were fond of 
their brandy, and for the temperate. There were a black- 
smith shop and a couple of stores.- The traders brought their 
goods from Alexandria, Baltimore, or even Philadelphia, and 
made a handsome profit. The lower taverns were scenes of 
drunken frolic, often ending in free fights. There was no 
constable, and the sheriff, when called to quell a disturbance, 
summoned as a posse those of the bystanders whom he deemed 
friendly to the cause of law and order. There were many 
strangers passing through; and the better class of these were 

' Ramsey, p. 277. The North Carolina legislature, in 1783, passed an act 
giving Henderson two hundred thousand acres, and appointed Joseph 
Martin Indian agent, arranged for a treaty with the Cherokees, and pro- 
vided that any good men should he allowed to trade with the Indians. 

"One was "kept by two Irishmen named Daniel and Manasses Freil" 
(,sic; the names look very much more German than Irish). 



532 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

welcome at the rambling log houses of the neighboring back- 
woods gentry, who often themselves rode into the taverns to 
learn from the travellers what was happening in the great 
world beyond the mountains. Court day was a great occa- 
sion; all the neighborhood flocked in to gossip, lounge, race 
horses, and fight. Of course, in such gatherings there were 
always certain privileged characters. At Abingdon, these 
were to be found in the persons of a hunter named Edward 
Callahan, and his wife Sukey, As regularly as court day 
came round they appeared, Sukey driving a cart laden with 
pies, cakes, and drinkables, while Edward, whose rolls of furs 
and deer-hides were also in the cart, stalked at its tail on foot, 
in full hunter's dress, with rifle, powder-horn, and bullet-bag, 
while his fine, well-taught hunting-dog followed at his heels. 
Sukey would halt in the middle of the street, make an awning 
for herself and begin business, while Edward strolled off to 
see about selling his peltries. Sukey never would take out a 
license, and so was often in trouble for selling liquor. The 
judges were strict in proceeding against offenders — and even 
stricter against the unfortunate Tories — but they had a hu- 
morous liking for Sukey, which was shared by the various 
grand juries. By means of some excuse or other she was 
always let off, and in return showed great gratitude to such 
of her benefactors as came near her mountain cabin.^ 

Court day was apt to close with much hard drinking; for 
the backwoodsmen of every degree dearly loved whiskey. 

NOTE 

It has been so habitual among American writers to praise all the 
deeds, good, bad, and indifferent, of our Revolutionary ancestors, and 
to belittle and make light of what we have recently done, that most men 
seem not to know that the Union and Confederate troops in the Civil 
War fought far more stubbornly and skilfully than did their forefathers 
at the time of the Revolution. It is impossible to estimate too highly 
the devoted patriotism and statesmanship of the founders of our na- 
tional life; and however high we rank Washington, I am confident that 

^Campbell MSS. ; an account of the "Town of Abingdon," by David 
Campbell, who "first saw it in 1782." 



HOLSTON SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 533 

we err, if anything, in not ranking him high enough, for on the whole 
the world has never seen a man deserving to be placed above him ; but 
we certainly have overestimated the actual fighting qualities of the 
Revolutionary troops, and have never laid enough stress on the folly 
and jealousy with which the States behaved during the contest. In 
1776, the Americans were still in the gristle ; and the feats of arms they 
then performed do not bear comparison with what they did in the prime 
of their lusty youth, eighty or ninety years later. The Continentals who 
had been long drilled by Washington and Greene were most excellent 
troops ; but they never had a chance to show at their best, because they 
were always mixed in with a mass of poor soldiers, either militia or 
just-enlisted regulars. 

The resolute determination of the Americans to win, their trust in 
the justice of their cause, their refusal to be cast down by defeat, the 
success with which they overran and conquered the West at the very 
time they were struggling for life or death in the East, the heroic 
grandeur of their great leader — for all this they deserve full credit. 
But the militia who formed the bulk of the Revolutionary armies did 
not generally fight well. Sometimes, as at Bunker Hill and King's 
Mountain, they did excellently, and they did better, as a rule, than 
similar European bodies — than the Spanish and Portuguese peasants in 
1807-12, for instance. At that time it was believed that the American 
militia could not fight at all ; this was a mistake, and the British paid 
dearly for making it; but the opposite belief, that militia could be 
generally depended upon, led to quite as bad blunders, and the politicians 
of the Jeffersonian school who encouraged the idea made us in our turn 
pay dearly for our folly in after-years, as at Bladensburg and along the 
Niagara frontier in 1812. The Revolutionary War proved that hastily 
gathered militia, justly angered and strung to high purpose, could some- 
times whip regulars, a feat then deemed impossible ; but it lacked very 
much of proving that they would usually do this. Moreover, even the 
stalwart fighters who followed Clark and Sevier, and who did most 
important and valorous service, cannot point to any one such desperate 
deed of fierce courage as that of the doomed Texans under Bowie and 
Davy Crockett in the Alamo. 

A very slight comparison of the losses suffered in the battles of the 
Revolution with those suffered in the battles of the Civil War is suffi- 
cient to show the superiority of the soldiers who fought in the latter 
(and a comparison of the tactics and other features of the conflicts will 
make the fact even clearer). No Revolutionary regiment or brigade 
suffered such a loss as befell the First Minnesota at Gettysburg, where 
it lost 215 out of 263 men, 82 per cent.; the Ninth Illinois at Shiloh, 
where it lost 366 out of 578 men, 63 per cent.; the First Maine at 
Petersburg, which lost 632 out of 950 men, 67 per cent. ; or Caldwell's 
brigade of New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania troops, 
which, in Hancock's attack at Fredericksburg, lost 949 out of 1,947 
men, 48 per cent. ; or, turning to the Southern soldiers, such a loss 
as that of the First Texans atAntietam, when 186 out of 226 men fell, 



534 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

82 per cent. ; or of the Twenty-Sixth North Carolina, which, at Gettys- 
burg, lost 588 out of 820 men, ^2 per cent. ; or the Eighth Tennessee, 
at Murf reesboro, which lost 306 out of 444 men, or 68 per cent. ; or 
Garnett's brigade of Virginians, which, in Pickett's charge, lost 941 
men out of 1,427, or 65 per cent. 

There were over a hundred regiments, and not a few brigades, in the 
Union and Confederate armies, each of which in some one action 
suffered losses averaging as heavy as the above. The Revolutionary 
armies cannot show such a roll of honor as this. Still, it is hardly fair 
to judge them by this comparison, for the Civil War saw the most 
bloody and desperate fighting that has occurred of late years. None of 
the European contests since the close of the Napoleonic struggles can 
be compared to it. Thus, the Light Brigade at Balaclava lost only 
2,7 per cent., or 247 men out of 673, while the Guards at Inkermann lost 
but 45 per cent., or 594 out of 1,331 ; and the heaviest German losses in 
the Franco-Prussian war were but 49 and 46 per cent., occurring-, 
respectively, to the Third Westphalian Regiment at Mars-le-Tours, and 
the Garde-Schutzen battalion at Metz. 

These figures are taken from "Regimental Losses in the American 
Civil War," by Colonel William F. Fox, Albany, 1881 ; the loss in each 
instance includes few or no prisoners save in the cases of Garnett's 
brigade and of the Third Westphalian Regiment. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT 

I 779-1 780 

ROBERTSON had no share in the glory of King's 
Mountain, and no part in the subsequent career of 
the men who won it; for at the time he was doing 
his allotted work, a work of at least equal importance, in a 
different field. The year before the mountaineers faced Fer- 
guson, the man who had done more than any one in founding 
the settlements from which the victors came, had once more 
gone into the wilderness to build a new and even more typical 
frontier commonwealth, the westernmost of any yet founded 
by the backwoodsmen. 

Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the 
Holston and Watauga people. He had at different times 
played the foremost part in organizing the civil government 
and in repelling outside attack. He had been particularly suc- 
cessful in his dealings with the Indians, and by his missions 
to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on more 
than one occasion when a war would have been disastrous to 
the whites. He was prosperous and successful in his private 
affairs; nevertheless, in 1779, the restless cravings for change 
and adventure surged so strongly in his breast that it once 
more drove him forth to wander in the forest. In the true 
border temper, he determined to abandon the home he had 
made, and to seek out a new one hundreds of miles farther 
in the heart of the hunting-grounds of the red warriors. 

The point pitched upon was the beautiful country lying 
along the great bend of the Cumberland. Many adventurous 

535 



536 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

settlers were anxious to accompany Robertson, and, like him, 
to take their wives and children with them into the new land. 
It was agreed that a small party of explorers should go first 
in the early spring to plant corn, that the families might have 
it to eat when they followed in the fall. 

The spot was already well known to hunters. Who had 
first visited it, cannot be said; though tradition has kept the 
names of several among the many who at times halted there 
while on their wanderings.^ Old Kasper Mansker and others 
had made hunting trips thither for ten years past; and they 
had sometimes met the Creole trappers from the Illinoisl. 
When Mansker first went to the Bluffs," in 1769, the buffa- 
loes were more numerous than he had ever seen them before; 
the ground literally shook under the gallop of the mighty 
herds, they crowded in dense throngs round the licks, and the 
forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He and other 
woodsmen came back there off and on, hunting and trapping, 
and living in huts made of buffalo-hides ; just such huts as 
the hunters dwelt in on the Little Missouri and Powder rivers 
as late as 1883, except that the plainsmen generally made dug- 
outs in the sides of the buttes and used the hides only for 
the roofs and fronts. So the place was well known, and the 
reports of the hunters had made many settlers eager to visit 
it, though as yet no regular path led thither. In 1778, the 
first permanent settler arrived, in the person of a hunter 
named Spencer, who spent the following winter entirely alone 
in this remote wilderness, living in a hollow sycamore tree. 
Spencer was a giant in his day, a man huge in body and limb, 
all whose life had been spent in the wilderness. He came to 

* One Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boone's old associate, is the first whose 
name is given in the books. But in both Kentucky and Tennessee it is 
idle to try to find out exactly who the first explorers were. They were 
unlettered woodsmen ; it is only by chance that some of their names have 
been kept and others lost ; the point to be remembered is that many 
hunters were wandering over the land at the same time, that they drifted 
to many different places, and that now and then an accident preserved the 
name of some hunter and of some place he visited. 

' The locality where Nashborough was built was sometimes spoken of as 
the Bluffs, and sometimes as the French Lick. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 537 

the bend of the Cumberland from Kentucky in the early 
spring, being in search of good land on which to settle. Other 
hunters were with him, and they stayed some time. A Creole 
trapper from the Wabash was then living in a cabin on the 
south side of the river. He did not meet the newcomers ; 
but one day he saw the huge moccasin tracks of Spencer, and 
on the following morning the party passed close by his cabin 
in chase of a wounded buffalo, halloing and shouting as they 
dashed through the underwood. Whether he thought them 
Indians, or whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and 
dislike felt by most of the Creoles for the American back- 
woodsmen, cannot be said; but certainly he left his cabin, 
swam the river, and, plunging into the forest, straightway fled 
to his kinsfolk on the banks of the Wabash. Spencer was 
soon left by his companions; though one of them stayed with 
him a short time, helping him to plant a field of corn. Then 
this man, too, wished to return. He had lost his hunting- 
knife; so Spencer went with him to the barrens of Kentucky, 
put him on the right path, and, breaking his own knife, gave 
his departing friend a piece of the metal. The undaunted old 
hunter himself returned to the banks of the Cumberland, and 
sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the neighborhood 
of a little clearing on which he had raised the corn-crop; a 
strange, huge, solitary man, self-reliant, unflinching, cut off 
from all his fellows by endless leagues of shadowy forest. 
Thus he dwelt alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whith- 
ersoever he listed through the depths of the melancholy and 
wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire or in the hollow tree 
trunk, ever ready to do battle against brute or human foe — a 
stark and sombre harbinger of the oncoming civilization. 

Spencer's figure, seen through the mist that shrouds early 
Western history, is striking and picturesque in itself; yet its 
chief interest lies in the fact that he was but a type of many 
other men whose lives were no less lonely and dangerous. 
He had no qualities to make him a leader when settlements 
sprang up around him. To the end of his days he remained 



538 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

a solitary hunter and Indian fighter, spuming restraint and 
comfort, and seeking the strong excitement of danger to give 
zest to his hfe. Even in the time of the greatest peril from 
the savages he would not stay shut up in the forts, but con- 
tinued his roving, wandering life, trusting to his own quick 
senses, wonderful strength, and iron nerves. He even con- 
tinued to He out at night, kindling a fire, and then lying down 
to sleep far from it.^ 

Early in the year 1779, a leader of men came to the place 
where the old hunter had roamed and killed game; and with 
the newcomer came those who were to possess the land, Rob- 
ertson left the Watauga settlements soon after the spring 
opened,^ with eight companions, one of them a negro. He 
followed Boone's trace — the Wilderness Road — through Cum- 
berland Gap, and across the Cumberland River. Then he 
struck off southwest through the wilderness, lightening his 
labor by taking the broad, well-beaten buffalo trails whenever 
they led in his direction ; they were very distinct near the pools 
and springs, and especially going to and from the licks. The 
adventurers reached the bend of the Cumberland without mis- 
hap, and fixed on the neighborhood of the Bluffs, the ground 
near the French Lick, as that best suited for their purpose; 
and they planted a field of corn on the site of the future 
forted village of Nashborough. A few days after their arrival 
they were joined by another batch of hunter-settlers, who had 
come out under the leadership of Kasper Mansker. 

As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put up, most 

^Southwestern Monthly, Nashville, 1852, vol. II. General Hall's 
"Narrative." 

^ It is very difficult to reconcile the dates of these early movements ; 
even the contemporary documents are often a little vague, while Haywood, 
Ramsey, and Putnam are frequently months out of the way. Apparently, 
Robertson stayed as commissioner in Chota until February or March, 1779, 
when he gave warning of the intended raid of the Chickamaugas, and im- 
mediately afterward came back to the settlements and started out for the 
Cumberland, before Shelby left on his Chickamauga expedition. But it 
is possible that he had left Chota before, and that another man was there 
as commissioner at the time of the Chickamauga raid which was followed 
by Shelby's counter-stroke. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779- 1780 539 

of the intending settlers returned to their old homes to bring 
out their families, leaving three of their number "to keep the 
buffaloes out of the corn." ^ Robertson himself first went 
north through the wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in 
Illinois, to purchase cabin rights from him. This act gives 
an insight into at least some of the motives that influenced the 
adventurers. Doubtless, they were impelled largely by sheer 
restlessness and love of change and excitement,- and these 
motives would probably have induced them to act as they did, 
even had there been no others. But another and most power- 
ful spring of action was the desire to gain land — not merely 
land for settlement, but land for speculative purposes. Wild 
land was then so abundant that the quantity literally seemed 
inexhaustible; and it was absolutely valueless until settled. 
Our forefathers may well be pardoned for failing to see that 
it was of more importance to have it owned in small lots by 
actual settlers than to have it filled up quickly under a system 
of huge grants to individuals or corporations. Many wise 
and good men honestly believed that they would benefit the 
country at the same time that they enriched themselves by 
acquiring vast tracts of virgin wilderness, and then proceed- 
ing to people them. There was a rage for land speculation 
and land companies of every kind. The private correspon- 
dence of almost all the public men of the period, from Wash- 
ington, Madison, and Gouvemeur Morris down, is full of the 
subject. Innumerable people of position and influence dreamed 
of acquiring untold wealth in this manner. Almost every 
man of note was actually or potentially a land speculator ; and 
in turn almost every prominent pioneer, from Clark and Boone 
to Shelby and Robertson, was either himself one of the specu- 
lators or an agent for those who were. Many people did not 
understand the laws on the subject, or hoped to evade them; 
and the hope was as strong in the breast of the hunter who 

^ Haywood, 83. 

'Phelan, p. iii, fails to do justice to these motives, while very properly 
insisting on what earlier historians ignored, the intense desire for land 
speculation. 



540 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

made a "tomahawk claim," by blazing a few trees, and sold it 
for a small sum, to a newcomer, as in that of the well-to-do 
schemer, who bought an Indian title for a song, and then got 
what he could from all outsiders who came in to dwell on 
the land. 

This speculative spirit was a powerful stimulus to the set- 
tlement not only of Kentucky, but of middle Tennessee. 
Henderson's claim included the Cumberland country, and 
when North Carolina annulled his rights, she promised him 
a large but indefinitely located piece of land in their place. 
He tried to undersell the State in the land market, and un- 
doubtedly his offers had been among the main causes that 
induced Robertson and his associates to go to the Cumber- 
land when they did. But at the time it was uncertain whether 
Cumberland lay in Virginia or North Carolina, as the line 
was not run by the surveyors until the following spring; and 
Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was rumored that 
the latter had the disposal of Virginia "cabin rights," under 
which each man could, for a small sum, purchase a thousand 
acres, on condition of building a cabin and raising a crop. 
However, as it turned out, he might have spared himself the 
journey, for the settlement proved to be well within the Caro- 
lina boundary. 

In the fall very many men came out to the new settlement, 
guided thither by Robertson and Mansker; the former per- 
suading a number who were bound to Kentucky to go to the 
Cumberland instead. Among them were two or three of the 
Long Hunters, whose wanderings had done so much to make 
the country known. Robertson's special partner was a man 
named John Donelson. The latter went by water and took a 
large party of immigrants, including all the women and chil- 
dren, down the Tennessee, and thence up the Ohio and Cum- 
berland to the Bluffs or French Lick.^ Among them were 

*The plan was that Robertson should meet this party at the Muscle 
Shoals, and that they should go from thence overland ; but, owing to the 
severity of the winter, Robertson could not get to the shoals. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 541 

Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's daughter Rachel, 
the future wife of Andrew Jackson, who missed by so narrow 
a margin being mistress of the White House. Robertson, 
meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the men by land, so that 
they should get there first and make ready for the coming of 
their families. 

Robertson's party started in the fall, being both preceded 
and followed by other companies of settlers, some of whom 
were accompanied by their wives and children. Cold weather 
of extraordinary severity set in during November; for this 
was the famous "hard winter" of '79-80, during which the 
Kentucky settlers suffered so much. They were not molested 
by Indians, and reached the Bluffs about Christmas. The 
river was frozen solid, and they all crossed the ice in a body; 
when in midstream the ice jarred, and — judging from the 
report — the jar or crack must have gone miles up and down 
the stream ; but the ice only settled a little and did not break. 
By January ist, there were over two hundred people scattered 
on both sides of the river. In Robertson's company was a 
man named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one 
horned cattle and seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses 
which any of the immigrants succeeded in bringing to the 
Cumberland. But he was not the only man who had made 
the attempt. One of the immigrants who went in Donelson's 
flotilla, Daniel Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who 
went by land, one hundred pounds to drive along his horses and 
cattle. John accepted, and tried his best to fulfil his share of 
the bargain ; but he was seemingly neither a very expert woods- 
man nor yet a good stock hand. There is no form of labor 
more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and un- 
broken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially 
in bad weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found 
out. The animals would not follow the trail ; they incessantly 
broke away from it, got lost, scattered in the brush, and stam- 
peded at night. Finally, the unfortunate John, being, as he 



542 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

expressed it, nearly driven "mad by the drove," abandoned 
them all in the wilderness.^ 

The settlers who came by water passed through much 
greater peril and hardship. By a stroke of good fortune the 
journal kept by Donelson, the leader of the expedition, has 
been preserved.^ As with all the other recorded wanderings 
and explorations of these backwoods adventurers, it must be 
remembered that while this trip was remarkable in itself, it is 
especially noteworthy because, out of many such, it is the only 
one of which we have a full account. The adventures that 
befell Donelson's company differed in degree, but not in kind, 
from those that befell the many similar flotillas that followed 
or preceded him. From the time that settlers first came to 
the upper Tennessee valley occasional hardy hunters had 
floated down the stream in pirogues, or hollowed out tree 
trunks. Before the Revolution a few restless emigrants had 
adopted this method of reaching Natchez ; some of them made 
the long and perilous trip in safety, others were killed by the 
Chickamaugas or else foundered in the whirlpools or on the 
shoals. The spring before Donelson started, a party of men, 
women, and children, in forty canoes or pirogues, went down 
the Tennessee to settle in the newly conquered Illinois coun- 
try, and skirmished with the Cherokees on their way.^ 

^ MSS. pn "Dunham Pioneers," in Nashville Historical Society. Daniel, 
a veteran stockman, v^'as very angry when he heard what had happened. 

^ Original MS. "Journal of Voyage Intended by God's Permission in 
the Good Boat Adventure from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River 
to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland River, Kept by John Donelson." 
An abstract, with some traditional statements interwoven, is given by 
Haywood; the journal itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of 
the writer misspelt by Ramsey ; and in much better and fuller shape by 
A. N. Putnam in his "History of Middle Tennessee." I follow the 
original, in the Nashville Historical Society. 

' State Department MSS., No. 51, vol. II, p. 45. 

"James Colbert to Chas. Stuart. 

"Chickasaw Nation, May 25, 1779. 
"Sir, — I was this day informed that there is forty large Cannoes loaded 
with men women and children passed by here down the Cherokee River 
who on their way down they took a Dellaway Indian prisoner & kept him 
till they foimd out what Nation he was of — they told him they had come 
from Long Island and were on their way to Illinois with an intent to 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779- 1780 543 

Donelson's flotilla, after being joined by a number of other 
boats, especially at the mouth of the Clinch, consisted of some 
thirty craft, all told — flatboats, dugouts, and canoes. There 
were probably two or three hundred people, perhaps many 
more, in the company; among them, as the journal records, 
"James Robertson's lady and children," the latter to the num- 
ber of five. The chief boat, the flag-ship of the flotilla, was 
the Adventure, a great scow, in which there were over thirty 
men, besides the families of some of them. 

They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on December 
22d, but falling water and heavy frosts detained them two 
months, and the voyage did not really begin until they left 
Cloud Creek on February 27, 1780. The first ten days were 
uneventful. The Adventure spent an afternoon and night on 
a shoal, until the water fortunately rose and, all the men get- 
ting out, the clumsy scow was floated off. Another boat was 
driven on the point of an island and sunk, her crew being 
nearly drowned; whereupon the rest of the flotilla put to shore, 
the sunken boat was raised and bailed out, and most of her 
cargo recovered. At one landing-place a man went out to 
hunt, and got lost, not being taken up again for three days, 
though "many guns were fired to fetch him in," and the four- 
pounder on the Adz'enture was discharged for the same pur- 
pose. A negro became "much frosted in his feet and legs, of 
which he died." Where the river was wide a strong wind and 
high sea forced the whole flotilla to lay to, for the sake of 
the smaller craft. This happened on March 7th. iust before 

settle — Sir I have some reason to think they are a party of Rebels My 
reason is this after they let the Dellaway Indian at liberty they met with 
some Cherokees whom they endeavoured to decoy, but finding they would 
not be decoyed they fired on them but they all made their escape with the 
Loss of their arms and ammunition and one fellow wounded, who arrived 
yesterday. The Dellaway informs me that Lieut. Governor Hamilton is 
defeated and himself taken prisoner," etc. 

It is curious that none of the Tennessee annalists have noticed the de- 
parture of this expedition; very, very few of the deeds and wanderings 
of the old frontiersmen have been recorded ; and in consequence historians 
are apt to regard these few as being exceptional, instead of typical. 
Donelson was merely one of a hundred leaders of flotillas that went down 
the Western rivers at this time. 



544 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

coming to the uppermost Chickamauga town; and that night 
the wife of one Ephraim Peyton, who had himself gone with 
Robertson overland, was delivered of a child. She was in a 
boat whose owner was named Jonathan Jennings. 

The next morning they soon came to an Indian village on 
the south shore. The Indians made signs of friendliness, and 
two men started toward them in a canoe which the Adventure 
had in tow, while the flotilla drew up on the opposite side of 
the river. But a half-breed and some Indians jumping into a 
pirogue, paddled out to met the two messengers and advised 
them to return to their comrades, which they did. Several 
canoes then came off from the shore to the flotilla. The In- 
dians who were in them seemed friendly and were pleased 
with the presents they received ; but while these were being dis- 
tributed the whites saw a number of other canoes putting off, 
loaded with armed warriors, painted black and red. The half- 
breed instantly told the Indians roundabout to paddle to the 
shore, and warned the whites to push off at once, at the same 
time giving them some instructions about the river. The 
armed Indians went down along the shore for some time as 
if to intercept them; but at last they were seemingly left 
behind. 

In a short time another Indian village was reached, where 
the warriors tried in vain to lure the whites ashore ; and as 
the boats were hugging the opposite bank, they were suddenly 
fired at by a party in ambush, and one man slain. Imme- 
diately afterward a much more serious tragedy occurred. 
There was with the flotilla a boat containing twenty-eight 
men, women, and children, among whom the smallpox had 
broken out. To guard against infection, it was agreed that 
it should keep well in the rear; being warned each night by 
the sound of a horn when it was time to go into camp. 

As this forlorn boat-load of unfortunates came along, far 
behind the others, the Indians, seeing their defenseless posi- 
tion, sallied out in their canoes and butchered or captured all 
who were aboard. Their cries were distinctly heard by the 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779- 1780 545 

rearmost of the other craft, who could not stem the current 
and come to their rescue. But a dreadful retribution fell on 
the Indians; for they were infected with the disease of their 
victims, and for some months virulent smallpox raged among 
many of the bands of Creeks and Cherokees. When stricken 
by the disease, the savages first went into the sweat-houses, 
and when heated to madness, plunged into the cool streams, 
and so perished in multitudes. 

When the boats entered the Narrows they had lost sight of 
the Indians on shore, and thought they had left them behind. 
A man, who was in a canoe, had gone aboard one of the larger 
boats with his family, for the sake of safety while passing 
through the rough water. His canoe was towed alongside, 
and in the rapids it was overturned, and the cargo lost. The 
rest of the company, pitying his distress over the loss of all 
his worldly goods, landed, to see if they could not help him 
recover some of his property. Just as they got out on the 
shore to walk back, the Indians suddenly appeared almost over 
them, on the high cliffs opposite, and began to fire, causing a 
hurried retreat to the boats. For some distance the Indians 
lined the bluffs, firing from the heights into the boats below. 
Yet only four people were wounded, and they not danger- 
ously. One of them was a girl named Nancy Gower. When, 
by the sudden onslaught of the Indians, the crew of the boat 
in which she was were thrown into dismay, she took the helm 
and steered, exposed to the fire of the savages. A ball went 
through the upper part of one of her thighs, but she neither 
flinched nor uttered any cry; and it was not known that she 
was wounded until, after the danger was past, her mother saw 
the blood soaking through her clothes. She recovered, mar- 
ried one of the frontiersmen, and lived for fifty years after- 
ward, long enough to see all the wilderness filled with flourish- 
ing and populous States. 

One of the clumsy craft, however, did not share the good 
fortune that befell the rest, in escaping with so little loss and 
damage. Jonathan Jennings's boat, in which was Mrs. Pey- 



546 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ton, with her new-born baby, struck on a rock at the upper 
end of the whirl, the swift current rendering it impossible for 
the others to go to his assistance; and the}- drifted by, leaving 
him to his fate. The Indians soon turned their whole atten- 
tion to him, and from the bluffs opened a most galling fire 
upon the disabled boat. He returned it as well as he could, 
keeping them somewhat in check, for he was a most excellent 
marksman. At the same time he directed his two negroes, 
a man and women, his nearly grown son, and a young man 
who was with him, to lighten the boat by throwing his goods 
into the river. Before this was done, the negro man, the son, 
and the other young man most basely jumped into the river, 
and swam ashore. It is satisfactory to record that at least 
two of the three dastards met the fate they deserved. The 
negro was killed in the water, and the other two captured, one 
of them being afterward burned at the stake, while the other, 
it is said, was ultimately released. Meanwhile, Mrs. Jennings, 
assisted by the negro woman and Mrs. Peyton, actually suc- 
ceeded in shoving the lighted boat off the rock, though their 
clothes were cut in many places by the bullets ; and they rap- 
idly drifted out of danger. The poor little baby was killed in 
the hurry and confusion; but its mother, not eighteen hours 
from childbed, in spite of the cold, wet, and exertion, kept in 
good health. Sailing by night as well as day, they caught up 
with the rest of the flotilla before dawn on the second morn- 
ing afterward, the men being roused from their watch-fires by 
the cries of "help poor Jennings," as the wretched and worn- 
out survivors in the disabled boat caught the first glimpse of 
the lights on shore. 

Having successfully run the gantlet of the Chickamauga 
banditti, the flotilla was not again molested by the Indians, 
save once when the boats that drifted near shore were fired 
on by a roving war-party, and five men wounded. They 
ran over the great Muscle Shoals in about three hours with- 
out accident, though the boats scraped on the bottom here 
and there. The swift, broken water surged into high waves. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 547 

and roared through the piles of driftwood that covered the 
points of the small islands, round which the current ran in 
every direction; and those among the men who were unused 
to river-work were much relieved when they found themselves 
in safety. One night, after the fires had been kindled, the 
tired travellers were alarmed by the barking of the dogs. 
Fearing that Indians were near by, they hastily got into the 
boats and crossed to camp on the opposite shore. In the 
morning two of them returned to pick up some things that 
had been left; they found that the alarm had been false, for 
the utensils that had been overlooked in the confusion were 
undisturbed, and a negro who had been left behind in the 
hurry was still sleeping quietly by the camp-fires. 

On the 20th of the month they reached the Ohio. Some 
of the boats then left for Natchez, and others for the Illinois 
country ; while the remainder turned their prows upstream, 
to stem the rapid current — a task for which they were but ill 
suited. The w^ork was very hard, the provisions were nearly 
gone, and the crews were almost worn out by hunger and 
fatigue. On the 24th, they entered the mouth of the Cumber- 
land. The Adventure, the heaviest of all the craft, got much 
help from a small squaresail that was set in the bow. 

Two days afterward, the hungry party killed some buffalo, 
and feasted on the lean meat, and the next day they shot a 
swan "which was very delicious," as Donelson recorded. 
Their meal was exhausted and they could make no more 
bread ; but buffalo were plenty, and they hunted them steadily 
for their meat ; and they also made what some of them called 
"Shawnee salad" from a kind of green herb that grew in the 
bottoms. 

On the last day of the month they met Colonel Richard 
Henderson, who had just come out and was running the line 
between Virginia and North Carolina. The crews were so 
exhausted that the progress of the boats became very slow, 
and it was not until April 24th that they reached the Big Salt 



548 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Lick, and found Robertson awaiting them. The long, toil- 
some, and perilous voyage had been brought to a safe end. 

There were then probably nearly five hundred settlers on 
the Cumberland, one-half of them being able-bodied men in 
the prime of life.^ The central station, the capital of the little 
community, was that at the Bluffs, where Robertson built a 
little stockaded hamlet and called it Nashborough ; - it was of 
the usual type of small frontier forted town. Other stations 
were scattered along both sides of the river ; some were stock- 
ades, others merely blockhouses, with the yard and garden 
enclosed by stout palings. As with all similar border forts or 
stations, these were sometimes called by the name of the 
founder; more rarely, they were named with reference to 
some natural object, such as the river, ford, or hill by which 
they were, or commemorated some deed, or the name of a 
man the frontiersmen held in honor; and, occasionally, they 
afforded true instances of clan settlement and clan nomen- 
clature, several kindred families of the same name building a 
village which grew to be called after them. Among these 
Cumberland stations was Mansker's (usually called Kasper's 
or Gasper's — he was not particular how his name was spelled), 
Stone River, Bledsoe's, Freeland's, Eaton's, Clover-Bottom, 
and Fort Union. 

As the country where they had settled belonged to no tribe 
of Indians, some of the people thought they would not be 
molested, and, being eager to take up the best lands, scat- 
tered out to live on separate claims. Robertson warned them 
that they would soon suffer from the savages ; and his words 
speedily came true — whereupon the outlying cabins were de- 
serted and all gathered within the stockades. In April, roving 
parties of Delawares, Chickasaws, and Choctaws began to 
harass the settlement. As in Kentucky, so on the banks of the 

* Two hundred and fifty-six names are subscribed to the compact of 
government ; and in addition there were the women, children, the few 
slaves, and such men as did not sign. 

^ After A. Nash; he was the governor of North Carolina; where he did 
all he could on the patriot side. See Gates MSS., September 7, 1780. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779- 1780 549 

Cumberland, the Indians were the first to begin the conflict. 
The lands on which the whites settled were uninhabited, and 
were claimed as hunting-grounds by many hostile tribes; so 
that it is certain that no one tribe had any real title to them. 

True to their customs and traditions, and to their race- 
capacity for self-rule, the settlers determined forthwith to 
organize some kind of government under which justice might 
be done among themselves, and protection afforded against 
outside attack. Not only had the Indians begun their rav- 
ages, but turbulent and disorderly whites were also causing 
trouble. Robertson, who had been so largely instrumental in 
founding the Watauga settlement, and giving it laws, natur- 
ally took the lead in organizing this, the second community 
which he had caused to spring up in the wilderness. He 
summoned a meeting of delegates from the various stations, 
to be held at Nashborough ; ^ Henderson being foremost in 
advocating the adoption of the plan. 

In fact, Henderson, the treaty-maker and land speculator, 
whose purchase first gave the whites clear color of title to 
the valleys of the Kentucky and Cumberland, played somewhat 
the same part, though on a smaller scale, in the settlement 
made by Robertson as is that made by Boone. He and the 
Virginian com-missioner Walker had surveyed the boundary- 
line and found that the Cumberland settlements were well to 
the south of it. He then claimed the soil as his under the 
Cherokee deed and disposed of it to the settlers who con- 
tracted to pay ten dollars a thousand acres. This was but a 
fraction of the State price, so the settlers were all eager to 
hold under Henderson's deed ; one of the causes of their com- 
ing out had been the chance of getting land so cheap. But 
Henderson's claim was annulled by the legislature, and the 
satisfaction-piece of two hundred thousand acres allotted him 
was laid off elsewhere; so his contracts with the settlers came 

* It is to Putnam that we owe the publication of the compact of govern- 
ment, and the full details of the methods and proceedings by which it was 
organized and carried on. See "History of Middle Tennessee," pp. 84-103. 



550 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

to nothing, and they eventually got title in the usual way from 
North Carolina. They suffered no loss in the matter, for they 
had merely given Henderson promises to pay when his title 
was made good. 

The settlers, by their representatives, met together at Nash- 
borough, and on May i, 1780, entered into articles of agree- 
ment or a compact of government. It was doubtless drawn 
up by Robertson, with perhaps the help of Henderson, and 
was modelled upon what may be called the "constitution" of 
Watauga, with some hints from that of Transylvania.-^ The 
settlers ratified the deeds of their delegates on May 13th, when 
they signed the articles, binding themselves to obey them to 
the number of two hundred and fifty-six men. The signers 
practically guaranteed one another their rights in the land, 
and their personal security against wrong-doers ; those who 
did not sign were treated as having no rights whatever — a 
proper and necessary measure, as it was essential that the nat- 
urally lawless elements should be forced to acknowledge some 
kind of authority. 

The compact provided that the affairs of the community 
should be administered by a Court or Committee of twelve 
Judges, Triers, or General Arbitrators, to be elected in the 
different stations by vote of all the freemen -in them who 
were over twenty-one years of age. Three of the Triers were 
to come from Nashborough, two from Mansker's, two from 
Bledsoe's, and one from each of five other named stations.^ 

^ Phelan, the first historian who really grasped what this movement 
meant, and to what it was due, gives rather too much weight to the part 
Henderson played. Henderson certainly at this time did not aspire to form 
a new State on the Cumberland ; the compact especially provided for the 
speedy admission of Cumberland as a county of North Carolina. The 
marked difference between the Transylvania and the Cumberland "con- 
stitutions," and the close agreement of the latter with the Watauga 
articles, assuredly point to Robertson as the chief author. 

^ Putnam speaks of these men as "notables" ; apparently they called 
themselves as above. Putnam's book contains much very valuable infor- 
mation ; but it is written in most curious style and he interlards it with 
outside matter ; much that he puts in quotation-marks is apparently his 
own material. It is difficult to make out whether his "tribunal of notables" 
is his own expression or a quotation, but apparently it is the former. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 551 

Whenever the freemen of any station were dissatisfied with 
their Triers, they could at once call a new election, at which 
others might be chosen in their stead. The Triers had no 
salaries, but the Clerk of the Court was allowed some very 
small fees, just enough to pay for the pens, ink, and paper, 
all of them scarce commodities.^ The Court had jurisdiction 
in all cases of conflict over land titles, a land-oftice being 
established and an entry-taker appointed. Over half of the 
compact was devoted to the rules of the land-office. The 
Court, acting by a majority of its members, was to have 
jurisdiction for the recovery of debt or damages, and to be 
allowed to tax costs. Three Triers were competent to make 
a court to decide a case where the debt or damage was a hun- 
dred dollars or less, and there was no appeal from their de- 
cision. For a large sum an appeal lay to the whole Court. 
The Court appointed whomsoever it pleased to see decisions 
executed. It had power to punish all offenses against the 
peace of the community, all misdemeanors and criminal acts, 
provided only that its decisions did not go so far as to affect 
the life of the criminal. If the misdeed of the accused was 
such as to be dangerous to the State, or one "for which the 
benefit of clergy was taken away by law," he was to be bound 
and sent under guard to some place where he could be legally 
dealt with. The Court levied fines, payable in money or pro- 
visions, entered up judgments and awarded executions, and 
granted letters of administration upon estates of deceased 
persons, and took bonds "payable to the chairman of the Com- 
mittee." The expenses were to be paid proportionately by 
the various settlers. It was provided, in view of the Indian 
incursions, that the militia officers elected at the various sta- 
tions should have power to call out the militia when they 
deemed it necessary to repel or pursue the enemy. They were 
also given power to fine such men as disobeyed them, and to 
impress horses, if need be; if damaged, the horses were to be 
paid for by the people of the station in the proportion the 

* Haywood, 126. 



552 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

Court might direct. It was expressly declared that the com- 
pact was designed as a "temporary method of restraining the 
licentious," that the settlement did not desire to be exempt 
from the ratable share of the expense for the Revolutionary 
War, and earnestly asked that North Carolina would imme- 
diately make it part of the State, erecting it into a county. 
Robertson was elected chairman of the Court and colonel of 
the militia, being thus made both civil and military command- 
ant of the settlement. In common with other Triers, he un- 
dertook the solemnization of marriages; and these were always 
held legal, which was fortunate, as it was a young and vig- 
orous community, of which the members were much given 
to early wedlock. 

Thus a little commonwealth, a self-governing State, was 
created. It was an absolute democracy, the majority of free- 
men of full age in each stockade having power in every re- 
spect, and being able not only to elect, but to dismiss their 
delegates at any moment. Their own good sense and a feeling 
of fair play could be depended upon to protect the rights of 
the minority, especially as a minority of such men would cer- 
tainly not tolerate anything even remotely resembling tyranny. 
They had formed a representative government in which the 
legislative and judicial functions were not separated, and were 
even to a large extent combined with the executive. They 
had proceeded in an eminently practical manner, having mod- 
elled their system on what was to them the familiar govern- 
mental unit of the county with its county court and county 
militia officers. They made the changes that their peculiar 
position required, grafting the elective and representative sys- 
tems on the one they adopted, and, of course, enlarging the 
scope of the Court's action. Their compact was thus in some 
sort of an unconscious reproduction of the laws and customs 
of the old-time court-leet, profoundly modified to suit the 
peculiar needs of backwoods life, the intensely democratic 
temper of the pioneers, and, above all, the military necessi- 
ties of their existence. They had certain theories of liberty 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 553 

and justice; but they were too shrewd and hard-headed to try 
to build up a government on an entirely new foundation when 
they had, ready to hand, materials with which they were 
familiar. They knew by experience the workings of the 
county system; all they did was to alter the immediate chan- 
nel from which the Court drew its powers, and to adapt the 
representation to the needs of a community where constant 
warfare obliged the settlers to gather in little groups, which 
served as natural units. 

When the settlers first came to the country they found no 
Indians living in it, no signs of cultivation or cleared lands, 
and nothing to show that for ages past it had been inhabited. 
It was a vast plain, covered with woods and cane-brakes, 
through which the wild herds had beaten out broad trails. 
The only open places were the licks, sometimes as large as 
corn-fields, where the hoofs of the game had trodden the 
ground bare of vegetation, and channelled its surface with 
winding seams and gullies. It is even doubtful if the spot of 
bare ground which Mansker called an "old field" or some- 
times a "Chickasaw old field" was not merely one of these 
licks. Buffalo, deer, and bear abounded; elk, wolves, and 
panthers were plentiful. 

Yet there were many signs that in long bygone times a 
numerous population had dwelt in the land. Round every 
spring were many graves, built in a peculiar way, and cov- 
ered eight or ten inches deep by mould. In some places there 
were earth-covered foundations of ancient walls and embank- 
ments that enclosed spaces of eight or ten acres. The Indians 
knew as little as the whites ^ about these long-vanished mound- 
builders, and were utterly ignorant of the race to which they 
had belonged. 

For some months the whites who first arrived dwelt in 
peace. But in the spring, hunting and war parties from vari- 

^ Haywood. At present it is believed that the mound-builders were 
Indians. Haywood is the authority for the early Indian wars of the 
Cumberland settlement, Putnam supplying some information. 



554 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

ous tribes began to harass the settlers. Unquestionably, the 
savages felt jealous of the white hunters, who were killing 
and driving away the game, precisely as they all felt jealous 
of one another, and for the same reason. The Chickasaws, 
in particular, were much irritated by the fort Clark had built 
at Iron Bank, on the Mississippi. But the most powerful 
motive for the attacks was doubtless simply the desire for 
scalps and plunder. They gathered from different quarters 
to assail the colonists, just as the wild beasts gathered to prey 
on the tame herds. 

The Indians began to commit murders, kill the stock, and 
drive off the horses in April, and their ravages continued un- 
ceasingly throughout the year. Among the slain was a son 
of Robertson, and also the unfortunate Jonathan Jennings, 
the man who had suffered such loss when his boat was pass- 
ing the whirl of the Tennessee River. The settlers were shot 
as they worked on their clearings, gathered the corn-crops, or 
ventured outside the walls of the stockades. Hunters were 
killed as they stooped to drink at the springs, or lay in wait 
at the licks. They were lured up to the Indians by imitations 
of the gobbling of a turkey or the cries of wild beasts. They 
were regularly stalked as they still-hunted the game, or were 
ambushed as they returned with their horses laden with meat. 
The inhabitants of one station were all either killed or cap- 
tured. Robertson led pursuing parties after one or two of 
the bands, and recovered some plunder; and once or twice 
small marauding-parties were met and scattered, with some 
loss, by the hunters. But, on the whole, very little could be 
done at first to parry or revenge the strokes of the Indians.^ 

^ Putnam, p. 107, talks as if the settlers were utterly unused to Indian 
warfare, saying that until the first murder occurred, in this spring, "few, 
if any," of them had ever gazed on the victim of scalping-kuife and 
tomahawk. This is a curiously absurd statement. Many of the settlers 
were veteran Indian fighters. Almost all of them had been born and 
brought up on the frontier, amid a succession of Indian wars. It is, 
unfortunately, exceedingly difficult in Putnam's book to distinguish the 
really valuable authentic information it contains from the interwoven 
tissue of matter written solely to suit his theory of dramatic effect. He 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 555 

Horses and cattle had been brought into the new settle- 
ment in some number during the year ; but the savages killed 
or drove off most of them, shooting the hogs and horned 
stock, and stealing the riding animals. The loss of the milch 
cows in particular was severely felt by the women. More- 
over, there were heavy freshets, flooding the low bottoms on 
which the corn had been planted, and destroying most of the 
crop. 

These accumulated disasters wrought the greatest discour- 
agement among the settlers. Many left the country, and most 
of the remainder, when midsummer was past, began to urge 
that they should all go back in a body to the old settlements. 
The panic became very great. One by one the stockades were 
deserted, until finally all the settlers who remained were gath- 
ered in Nashborough and Freeland's.^ The Cumberland coun- 
try would have been abandoned to the Indians, had Robertson 
not shown himself to be exactly the man for whom the crisis 
called. 

Robertson was not a dashing, brilliant Indian fighter and 
popular frontier leader, like Sevier. He had rather the quali- 
ties of Boone, with the difference that he was less a wander- 
ing hunter and explorer, and better fitted to be head of a set- 
tled community. He was far-seeing, tranquil, resolute, un- 
shaken by misfortune and disaster; a most trustworthy man, 
with a certain severe fortitude of temper. All people natur- 
ally turned to him in time of panic, when the ordinarily bold 
and daring became cowed and confused. The straits to which 
the settlers were reduced, and their wild clamor for immediate 
flight, the danger from the Indians, the death of his own son, 
all combined failed to make him waver one instant in his pur- 
pose. He strongly urged on the settlers the danger of flight 
through the wilderness. He did not attempt to make light of 

puts in, with equal gravity, the "Articles of Agreement" and purely 

fictitious conversations, jokes, and the like. (See pp. 126, 144, and passim.) 

^ By some accounts, there were also a few settlers left in Eaton's 

Station ; and Mansker's was rarely entirely deserted for any length of time. 



556 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

the perils that confronted them if they remained, but he asked 
them to ponder well if the beauty and fertility of the land did 
not warrant some risk being run to hold it, now that it was 
won. They were at last in a fair country, fitted for the homes 
of their children. Now was the time to keep it. If they 
abandoned it they would lose all the advantages they had 
gained, and would be forced to suffer the like losses and pri- 
vations if they ever wished to retake possession of it or of 
any similar tract of land. He, at least, would not turn back, 
but would stay to the bitter end. 

His words and his steadfast bearing gave heart to the set- 
tlers, and they no longer thought of flight. As their corn had 
failed them they got their food from the woods. Some gath- 
ered quantities of. walnuts, hickory-nuts, and shellbarks, and 
the hunters wrought havoc among the vast herds of game. 
During the early winter one party of twenty men that went 
up Caney Fork on a short trip killed one hundred and five 
bears, seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty-seven deer, and 
brought the flesh and hides back to the stockades in canoes; 
so that through the winter there was no lack of jerked and 
smoke-dried meat. 

The hunters were very accurate marksmen; game was 
plenty, and not shy, and so they got up close and rarely wasted 
a shot. Moreover, their small-bore rifles took very little 
powder — in fact, the need of excessive economy in the use of 
ammunition when on their long hunting trips was one of 
the chief reasons for the use of small bores. They therefore 
used comparatively little ammunition. Nevertheless, by the 
beginning of winter both powder and bullets began to fail. 
In this emergency Robertson again came to the front to rescue 
the settlement he had founded and preserved. He was accus- 
tomed to making long, solitary journeys through the forest, 
unmindful of the Indians ; he had been one of the first to 
come from North Carolina to Watauga ; he had repeatedly 
been on perilous missions to the Cherokees ; he had the pre- 
vious year gone north to the Illinois country to meet Clark, 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780 557 

He now announced that he would himself go to Kentucky and 
bring back the needed ammunition; and at once set forth on 
his journey, across the long stretches of snow-powdered bar- 
rens, and desolate, Indian-haunted woodland. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE OF 
THE REVOLUTION 

1781-1783 

ROBERTSON passed unharmed through the wilderness 
to Kentucky. There he procured plenty of powder, 
and without delay set out on his return journey to the 
Cumberland. As before, he travelled alone through the frozen 
woods, trusting solely to his own sharp senses for his safety. 

In the evening of January 15, 1781, he reached Freeland's 
station, and was joyfully received by the inmates. They supped 
late, and then sat up for some time, talking over many matters. 
When they went to bed all were tired, and neglected to take 
the usual precautions against surprise ; moreover, at that 
season they did not fear molestation. They slept heavily, 
none keeping watch. Robertson alone was wakeful and sus- 
picious ; and even during his light slumbers his keen and long- 
trained senses were on the alert. 

At midnight all was still. The moon shone brightly down 
on the square blockhouses and stockaded yard of the lonely 
little frontier fort ; its rays lit up the clearing, and by contrast 
darkened the black shadow of the surrounding forest. None 
of the sleepers within the log walls dreamed of danger. Yet 
their peril was imminent. An Indian war band* was lurking 
near by, and was on the point of making an effort to carry 
Freeland's station by an attack in the darkness. In the dead 
of the night the attempt was made. One by one the warriors 
left the protection of the tangled wood-growth, slipped silently 
across the open space, and crouched under the heavy timber 

558 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 559 

pickets of the palisades, until all had gathered together. 
Though the gate was fastened with a strong bar and chain, 
the dexterous savages finally contrived to open it. 

In so doing they made a slight noise, which caught Robert- 
son's quick ear, as he lay on his buffalo-hide pallet. Jump- 
ing up, he saw the gate open, and dusky figures gliding into 
the yard with stealthy swiftness. At his cry of "Indians," 
and the report of his piece, the settlers sprang up, every man 
grasping the loaded arm by which he slept. From each log 
cabin the rifles cracked and flashed; and, though the Indians 
were actually in the yard, they had no cover, and the sudden 
and unexpected resistance caused them to hurry out much 
faster than they had come in. Robertson shot one of their 
number, and they in return killed a white man who sprang 
out-of-doors at the first alarm. When they were driven out, 
the gate was closed after them ; but they fired through the 
loopholes, especially into one of the blockhouses where the 
chinks had not been filled with mud, as in the others. They 
thus killed a negro, and wounded one or two other men ; yet 
they were soon driven off. Robertson's return had been at a 
most opportune moment. As so often before and afterward, 
he had saved the settlement from destruction. 

Other bands of Indians joined the war-party, and they 
continued to hover about the stations, daily inflicting loss and 
damage on the settlers. They burned down the cabins and 
fences, drove off the stock, and killed the hunters, the women, 
and children who ventured outside the walls, and the men 
who had gone back to their deserted stockades.^ 

* Haywood says they burned "immense quantities of corn" ; as Putnam 
points out, the settlers could have had very little corn to burn. Haywood 
is the best authority for the Indian fighting in the Cumberland district 
during '80, '81, and '82. Putnam supplies some details learned from Mrs. 
Robertson in her old age. The accounts are derived mainly from the 
statements of old settlers ; but the Robertsons seem always to have kept 
papers, which served to check off the oral statements. For all tl.v! im- 
portant facts there is good authority. The annals are filled with name 
after name of men who were killed by the Indians. The dates, and even 
the names, may be misplaced in many of these instances ; but this is really 



56o THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

On the second day of April another effort was made by a 
formidable war-party to get possession of one of the two 
remaining stations — Freeland's and Nashborough — and thus, 
at a stroke, drive the whites from the Cumberland district. 
This time Nashborough was the point aimed at. 

A large body ^ of Cherokees approached the fort in the 
night, lying hid in the bushes, divided into two parties. In 
the morning three of them came near, fired at the fort, and 
ran off toward where the smaller party lay ambushed, in a 
thicket through which ran a little "branch." Instantly twenty 
men mounted their horses and galloped after the decoys. As 
they overtook the fugitives they saw the Indians hid in the 
creek bottom, and dismounted to fight, turning their horses 
loose. A smart interchange of shots followed, the whites 
having, if anything, rather the best of it, when the other and 
larger body of Indians rose from their hiding-place, in a 
clump of cedars, and running down, formed between the com- 
batants and the fort, intending to run into the latter, mixed 
with the fleeing riflemen. The only chance of the hemmed-in 
whites was to turn and try to force their way back through 
their far more numerous foes. This was a desperate venture, 
for their pieces were all discharged, and there was no time 
to reload them ; but they were helped by two unexpected cir- 
cumstances. Their horses had taken flight at the firing, and 
ran off toward the fort, passing to one side of the intervening 
line of Indians; and many of the latter, eager for such booty, 
ran off to catch them. Meanwhile, the remaining men in the 
fort saw what had happened, and made ready for defense, 
while all the women likewise snatched up guns or axes, and 
stood by loopholes and gate. The dogs in the fort were also 
taking a keen interest in what was going on. They were 
stout, powerful animals, some being hounds and others watch- 

a matter of no consequence, for their only interest is to show the nature 
of the harassing Indian warfare, and the kind of adventure then common. 
^ How large, it is impossible to say. One or two recent accounts make 
wild guesses, calling it i,ooo; but this is sheer nonsense; it is more likely 
to have been loo. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 561 

dogs, but all accustomed to contests with wild beasts ; and by 
instinct and training they mortally hated Indians. Seeing the 
line of savages drawn up between the fort and their masters, 
they promptly sallied out and made a most furious onset upon 
their astonished foes. Taking advantage of this most oppor- 
tune diversion, the whites ran through the lines and got into 
the fort, the Indians being completely occupied in defending 
themselves from the dogs. Five of the whites were killed, 
and they carried two wounded men into the fort. Another 
man, when almost in safety, was shot, and fell with a broken 
thigh ; but he had reloaded his gun as he ran, and he killed his 
assailant as the latter ran up to scalp him. The people from 
the fort then, by firing their rifles, kept his foes at bay until 
he could be rescued; and he soon recovered from his hurt. 
Yet another man was overtaken almost under the walls, the 
Indian punching him in the shoulder with the gun as he pulled 
the trigger; but the gun snapped, and a hunter ran out of the 
fort and shot the Indian. The gates were closed, and the 
whites all ready; so the Indians abandoned their effort and 
drew off. They had taken five scalps and a number of horses; 
but they had failed in their main object, and the whites had 
taken two scalps, besides killing and wounding others of the 
red men, who were carried off by their comrades. 

After the failure of this attempt, the Indians did not, for 
some years, make any formidable attack on any of the larger 
stations. Though the most dangerous of all foes on their 
own ground, their extreme caution, and dislike of suffering 
punishment, prevented them from ever making really deter- 
mined efforts to carry a fort openly by storm; moreover, 
these stockades were really very defensible against men un- 
provided with artillery, and there is no reason for supposing 
that any troops could have carried them by fair charging, 
without suffering altogether disproportionate loss. The red 
tribes acted in relation to the Cumberland settlements exactly 
as they had previously done toward those on the Kentucky 
and Watauga. They harassed the settlers from the outset; 



562 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

but they did not wake up to the necessity for a formidable 
and combined campaign against them until it was too late for 
such a campaign to succeed. If, at the first, any one of these 
communities had been forced to withstand the shock of such 
Indian armies as were afterward brought against it, it would, 
of necessity, have been abandoned. 

Throughout '8i and '82 the Cumberland settlers were wor- 
ried beyond description by a succession of small war-parties. 
In the first of these years they raised no corn; in the second, 
they made a few crops on fields they had cleared in 1780. No 
man's life was safe for an hour, whether he hunted, looked 
up strayed stock, went to the spring for water, or tilled the 
fields. If two men were together, one always watched while 
the other worked, ate, or drank; and they sat down back to 
back, or, if there were several, in a ring, facing outward, like 
a covey of quail. The Indians were especially fond of steal- 
ing the horses; the whites pursued them in bands, and occa- 
sionally pitched battles were fought, with loss on both sides, 
and apparently as often resulting in the favor of one party as 
of the other. The most expert Indian fighters naturally be- 
came the leaders, being made colonels and captains of the local 
militia. The position and influence of the officers depended 
largely on their individual prowess ; they were the actual, not 
titular, leaders of their men. Old Kasper Mansker, one of 
the most successful, may be taken as a type of the rest. He 
was ultimately made a colonel, and shared in many expedi- 
tions ; but he always acted as his own scout, and never would 
let any of his men ride ahead or abreast of him, preferring to 
trust to his own eyes and ears and knowledge of forest war- 
fare. The hunters, who were especially exposed to danger, 
were also the men who inflicted the most loss on the Indians, 
and, though many more of the settlers than of their foes were 
slain, yet the tables were often turned on the latter, even by 
those who seemed their helpless victims. Thus, once, two lads 
"were watching at a deer-lick, when some Indians came to it; 
each of the boys chose his man, fired, and then fled home- 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 563 

ward ; coming back with some men, they found they had killed 
two Indians, whose scalps they took. 

The eagerness of the Indians to get scalps caused them fre- 
quently to scalp their victims before life was extinct; and, as 
a result, there were numerous instances in which the scalped 
unfortunate, whether man, woman, or child, was rescued and 
recovered, living many years. One of these instances is worth 
giving in the quaint language of the old Tennessee historian, 
Haywood : 

"In the spring of the year 1782 a party of Indians fired 
upon three persons at French Lick, and broke the arms of 
John Tucker and Joseph Hendricks, and shot down David 
Hood, whom they scalped and stamped, as he said, and fol- 
lowed the others toward the fort; the people of the fort came 
out and repulsed them and saved the wounded men. Sup- 
posing the Indians gone. Hood got up softly, wounded and 
scalped as he was, and began to walk toward the fort on the 
bluff, when, to his mortification, he saw, standing upon the 
bank of the creek, a number of Indians, the same who had 
wounded him before, making sport of his misfortune and 
mistake. They then fell upon him again, and having given 
him, in several places, new wounds that were apparently mor- 
tal, then left him. He fell into a brush heap in the mow, and 
next morning was tracked and found by his blood, and was 
placed as a dead man in one of the outhouses, and was left 
alone; after some time he recovered, and lived many years." 

Many of the settlers were killed, many others left for Ken- 
tucky, Illinois, or Natchez, or returned to their old homes 
among the Alleghanies; and in 1782 the inhabitants, who had 
steadily dwindled in numbers, became so discouraged that 
they again mooted the question of abandoning the Cumber- 
land district in a body. Only Robertson's great influence 
prevented this being done ; but by word and example he finally 
persuaded them to remain. The following spring brought the 
news of peace with Great Britain. A large inflow of new 
settlers began with the new year, and though the Indian hos- 



564 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

tilities still continued, the Cumberland country throve apace, 
and by the end of 1783 the old stations had been rebuilt and 
many new ones founded. Some of the settlers began to live 
out on their clearings. Rude little corn-mills and "hominy 
pounders" were built beside some of the streams. The piles 
of furs and hides that had accumulated in the stockades were 
sent back to the coast country on pack-horses. After this year 
there was never any danger that the settlements would be 
abandoned. 

During the two years of petty but disastrous Indian war- 
fare that followed the attack on Freeland's, the harassed and 
diminishing settlers had been so absorbed in the contest with 
the outside foe that they had done little toward keeping up 
their own internal government. When 1783 opened, new 
settlers began to flock in, the Indian hostilities abated, and 
commissioners arrived from North Carolina under a strong 
guard, with the purpose of settling the claims of the various 
settlers ^ and laying off the bounty lands promised to the Con- 
tinental troops." It therefore became necessary that the Com- 
mittee or Court of Triers should again be convened, to see 
that justice was done as between man and man. 

The ten men elected from the different stations met at Nash- 
borough on January 7th, Robertson being again made chair- 
man, as well as colonel of the militia, while a proper clerk and 
sheriff were chosen. Each member took a solemn oath to do 
equal justice according to the best of his skill and ability. The 
number of suits between the settlers themselves were disposed 
of. These related to a variety of subjects. A kettle had been 
"detained" from Humphrey Hogan; he brought suit, and it 
was awarded him, the defendant "and his mother-in-law" 
being made to pay the cost of the suit. A hog case, a horse 
used in hunting, a piece of cleared ground, a bed which had 

* Haywood. Six hundred and forty acres were allowed by pre-emption 
claim to each family settled before June i, 1780; after that date they had 
to make proper entries in the courts. The salt-licks were to be held as 
public property. 

"Isaac Shelby was one of these commissioners. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 565 

not been made according- to contract, the ownership of a 
canoe, and of a heifer, a "clevis lent and delayed to be 
returned" — such were some of the cases on which the judges 
had to decide. There were occasional slander suits; for in a 
small backwoods community there is always much jealousy 
and bitter gossip. When suit was brought for "cattle won at 
cards," the Committee promptly dismissed the claim as illegal ; 
they evidently had clear ideas as to what was good public 
policy. A man making oath that another had threatened his 
life, the latter w^as taken and put under bonds. Another pro- 
duced a note-of-hand for the payment of two good cows, 
"against John Sadler"; he "proved his accompt," and pro- 
cured an attachment against the estate of "Sd. Sadler." When 
possible, the Committee compromised the cases, or advised the 
parties to adjust matters between themselves. The sheriff 
executed the various decrees in due form ; he arrested the men 
who refused to pay heed to the judgments of the Court, and 
when necessary took out of their "goods and chatties, lands 
and tenements," the damages awarded, and also the costs and 
fees. The government was in the hands of men who were 
not only law-abiding themselves, but also resolute to see that 
the law was respected by others. 

The Committee took cognizance of all affairs concerning 
the general welfare of the community. They ordered roads 
to be built between the different stations, appointing overseers 
who had power to "call out hands to work on the same." Be- 
sides the embodiment of all the full-grown men as militia — 
those of each station under their own captain, lieutenant, and 
ensign — a diminutive force of paid regulars was organized; 
that is, six spies were "kept out to discover the motions of 
the enemy so long as we shall be able to pay them; each to 
receive seventy-five bushels of Indian corn per month." They 
were under the direction of Colonel Robertson, who was head 
of all the branches of the government. One of the Com- 
mittee's regulations followed an economic principle of doubt- 
ful value. Some enterprising individuals, taking advantage 



566 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

of the armed escort accompanying the CaroHna commissioners, 
brought out casks of liquors. The settlers had drunk nothing 
but water for many months, and they eagerly purchased the 
liquor, the merchants naturally charging all that the traffic 
would bear. This struck the Committee as a grievance, and 
they forthwith passed a decree that any person bringing in 
liquor "from foreign ports," before selling the same, must 
give bond that they would charge no more than one silver 
dollar, or its value in merchandise, per quart. 

Some of the settlers would not enter the association, pre- 
ferring a condition of absolute freedom from law. The Com- 
mittee, however, after waiting a proper time, forced these men 
in by simply serving notice that thereafter they would be 
treated as beyond the pale of the law — not entitled to its pro- 
tection, but amenable to its penalties. A petition was sent to 
the North Carolina legislature, asking that the protection of 
government should be extended to the Cumberland people, and 
showing that the latter were loyal and orderly, prompt to sup- 
press sedition and lawlessness, faithful to the United States, 
and hostile to its enemies.^ To show their good feeling, the 
Committee made every member of the community, who had 
not already done so, take the oath of abjuration and fidelity. 

Until full governmental protection could be secured the 
commonwealth was forced to act as a little sovereign state, 
bent on keeping the peace, and yet on protecting itself against 
aggression from the surrounding powers, both red and white. 
It was forced to restrain its own citizens, and to enter into 
quasi-diplomatic relations with its neighbors. Thus early this 
year fifteen men, under one Colbert, left the settlements and 
went down the river in boats, ostensibly to trade with the 
Indians, but really to plunder the Spaniards on the Missis- 
sippi. They were joined by some Chickasaws, and at first 
met with some success in their piratical attacks, not only on 
the Spanish trading-boats, but on those of the French Creoles, 

* This whole account is taken from Putnam, who has rendered such 
inestimable service by preserving these records. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 567 

and even the Americans, as well. Finally, they were repulsed 
in an attempt against the Spaniards at Ozark; some were 
killed, and the rest scattered,'^ Immediately upon learning of 
these deeds, the Committee of Triers passed stringent resolu- 
tions forbidding all persons trading with the Indians until 
granted a license by the Committee, and until they had fur- 
nished ample security for their good behavior. The Com- 
mittee also wrote a letter to the Spanish governor at New 
Orleans, disclaiming all responsibility for the piratical mis- 
deeds of Colbert and his gang, and announcing the measures 
they had taken to prevent any repetition of the same in the 
future. They laid aside the sum of twenty pounds to pay the 
expenses of the messengers who carried this letter to the Vir- 
ginian "agent" at the Illinois, whence it was forwarded to 
the Spanish governor.^ 

One of the most difficult questions with which the Com- 
mittee had to deal was that of holding a treaty with the In- 
dians. Commissioners came out from Virginia and North 
Carolina especially to hold such a treaty ; ^ but the settlers 
declined to allow it until they had themselves decided on its 
advisability. They feared to bring so many savages together, 
lest they might commit some outrage, or be themselves sub- 
jected to such at the hands of one of the many wronged and 
reckless whites ; and they knew that the Indians would expect 
many presents, while there was very little indeed to give them. 
Finally, the Committee decided to put the question of treaty 
or no treaty to the vote of the freemen in the several stations; 
and by a rather narrow majority it was decided in the affirma- 
tive. The Committee then made arrangements for holding 
the treaty in June some four miles from Nashborough, and 
strictly prohibited the selling of liquor to the savages. At the 

* Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," vol. Ill, pp. 469. 527- 

"Putnam, pp. 185, 189, 191. 

'Donelson, who was one of the men who became discouraged and went 
to Kentucky, was the Virginian commissioner. Martin was the commis- 
sioner from North Carolina. He is sometimes spoken of as if he likewise 
represented Virginia. 



568 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

appointed time, many chiefs and warriors of the Chickasaw s, 
Cherokees, and even Creeks appeared. There were various 
sports, such as ball-games and foot-races; and the treaty was 
brought to a satisfactory conclusion.^ It did not put a com- 
plete stop to the Indian outrages, but it greatly diminished 
them. The Chickasaws thereafter remained friendly; but, as 
usual, the Cherokee and Creek chiefs who chose to attend 
were unable to bind those of their fellows who did not. The 
whole treaty was, in fact, on both sides, of a merely prelimi- 
nary nature. The boundaries it arranged were not considered 
final until confirmed by the treaty of Hopewell a couple of 
years later. 

Robertson meanwhile was delegated by the unanimous vote 
of the settlers to go to the Assembly of North Carolina, and 
there petition for the establishment of a regular land-office at 
Nashborough, and in other ways advance the interests of the 
settlers. He was completely successful in his mission. The 
Cumberland settlements were included in a new county, called 
Davidson; ^ and an Inferior Court of Pleas and Common Ses- 
sions, vested by the act with extraordinary powers, was estab- 
lished at Nashborough. The four justices of the new court 
had all been Triers of the old Committee, and the scheme of 
government was practically not very greatly changed, although 
now resting on an indisputably legal basis. The Cumberland 
settlers had for years acted as an independent, law-abiding, 
and orderly commonwealth, and the Court of Triers had 
shown great firmness and wisdom. It spoke well for the 
people that they had been able to establish such a government, 
in which the majority ruled, while the rights of each indi- 
vidual were secured. Robertson deserves the chief credit as 
both civil and military leader. The Committee of which he 
was a member had seen that justice was done between man 
and man, had provided for defense against the outside foe, 

* Putnam, 196. 

*In honor of General William Davidson, a very gallant and patriotic 
soldier of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War. The county 
government was estal)lished in October, 1783. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 569 

and had striven to prevent any wrongs being done to neutral 
or allied powers. When they became magistrates of a county 
of North Carolina they continued to act on the lines they had 
already marked out. The increase of population had brought 
an increase of wealth. The settlers were still frontiersmen, 
clad in buckskin or homespun, with rawhide moccasins, living 
in log cabins, and sleeping under bearskins on beds made of 
buffalo-hides; but as soon as they ventured to live on their 
clearings the ground was better tilled, corn became abundant, 
and cattle and hogs increased as the game diminished. Nash- 
borough began to look more like an ordinary little border 
town.^ 

During the year Robertson carried on some correspondence 
with the Spanish governor at New Orleans, Don Estevan 
Miro. This was the beginning of intercourse between the 
Western settlers and the Spanish officers, an intercourse which 
was absolutely necessary, though it afterward led to many 
intrigues and complications. Robertson was obliged to write 
to Miro not only to disclaim responsibility for the piratical 
deeds of men like Colbert, but also to protect against the con- 
duct of certain of the Spanish agents among the Creeks and 
Chickamaugas. No sooner had hostilities ceased with the 
British than the Spaniards began to incite the savages to take 
up once more the hatchet they had just dropped,^ for Spain 
already recognized in the restless borderers possible and for- 
midable foes. 

Miro, in answering Robertson, assured him that the Span- 
iards were very friendly to the Western settlers, and denied 
that the Spanish agents were stirring up trouble. He also told 
him that the harassed Cherokees, weary of ceaseless warfare, 
had asked permission to settle west of the Mississippi, al- 
though they did not carry out their intention. He ended by 

*The justices built a court-house and jail of hewed logs, the former 
eighteen feet square, with a lean-to or shed of twelve feet on one side. 
The contracts for building were let out at vendue to the lowest bidder. 

'Calendar of "Virginia State Papers," Til, 358, 608, etc. 



570 THE WINNING OF THE WEST 

pressing Robertson and his friends to come down and settle 
in Spanish territory, guaranteeing them good treatment.^ 

In spite of Miro's fair words, the Spanish agents continued 
to intrigue against the Americans, and especially against the 
Cumberland people. Yet there was no open break. The 
Spanish governor was felt to be powerful for both good and 
evil, and at least a possible friend of the settlers. To many 
of their leaders he showed much favor, and the people as a 
whole were well impressed by him ; and as a compliment to 
him they ultimately, when the Cumberland counties were sep- 
arated from those lying to the eastward, united the former 
under the name of Mero ^ District. 

* Robertson MSS. As the letter is important, I give it in full in Note 
on p. 571. 
"So spelt; but apparently his true name was Miro. 



CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS, 1781-1783 571 

NOTE 

(From the Robertson MSS., vol. I, letter of Don Miro.) 

New Orleans, the 20th April 1783. 
Sir, 

I received yours of 29th January last, & am highly pleased in seeing 
the good intentions of the People of that District, & knowing the false- 
hood of the report we have heard they are willing to attack their 
Province. You ought to make the same account of the news you had 
that the Indians have been excited in their Province against you, since 
I wrote quite the contrary at different times to Alexander McGillevray 
to induce him to make peace, & lastly he answered me that he gave his 
word to the Governor of North Carolina that the Creeks would not 
trouble again those settlements : notwithstanding after the letter re- 
ceived from you, and other from Brigadier general Daniel Smith Esqr 
I will write to him engaging him to be not more troublesome to you. 

I have not any connection with Cheroquis & Marcuten, but as they 
go now & then to Illinois I will give advice to that Commander to 
induce them to be quiet : in respect to the former in the month of May 
of last year they asked the permission of settling them selves on the 
west side of the Mississippi River which is granted & they act accord- 
ingly, you plainly see you are quite free from their incursions 

I will give the Passeport you ask for your son-in-law, & I will be 
highly pleased with his coming down to setle in this Province & much 
more if you, & your family should come along with him, since I can 
assure you that you will find here your welfare, without being either 
molested on religious matters or paying any duty & under the circum- 
stances of finding allwais market for your crops which makes every one 
of the planters settled at Natchez or elsewhere to improve every day, 
much more so than if they were to purchase the Lands, as they are 
granted gratis 

I wish to be usefull to you being with regard sir 
Your most obt. hi. servant 

(Dupte.) EsTEVAN Miro. 

Colonel James Robertson, Esqr. 

The duplicity of the Spaniards is well illustrated by the fact that the 
Gardoqui MSS. give clear proof that they were assisting the Creeks 
with arms and ammunition at the very time Miro was writing these 
letters. See the Gardoqui MSS., passim, especially Miro's letter of 
June 28, 1786. 



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